"We develop a model of information exchange through communication and investigate its implications for information aggregation in large societies. An underlying state determines payoffs from different actions. Agents decide which others to form a costly communication link with incurring the...

We find that firms are more likely to split their stock if their peer firms have recently done so. The effect is comparable to an increase of 40-50% in the share price. Splitting probability is also increasing in the announcement returns of peer splits. These results are consistent with social...

This paper studies the effect of social learning on political outcomes in a model of informative campaign advertising. We find that communication networks among voters have important effects on parties' incentives to disclose political information, on voters' learning about candidates running...

Peer effects are potentially important for understanding the optimal organization of schools, jobs, and neighborhoods, but finding evidence is difficult because people are selected into peer groups based, in part, on their unobservable characteristics. I identify the effects of peers whom a...

We describe a dynamic model of costly information sharing, where private information affecting collective-value actions is transmitted by social proximity. Individuals make voluntary contributions towards the provision of a pure public good, and information transmission about quality of...