This paper develops a model of housing decisions which allows for social interactions within residential neighborhoods to impact homeowners' valuation of their own properties. The model is used to structure an empirical investigation with data from the American Housing Survey for 1985 and 1989....

The paper addresses the empirical significance of the social context in economic decisions. Decisions of individuals who share spatial and social milieus are likely to be interdependent, and econometric identification of social effects poses intricate data and methodological problems, including...

While interest in social determinants of individual behavior has led to a rich theoretical literature and many efforts to measure these influences, a mature "social econometrics" has yet to emerge. This chapter provides a critical overview of the identification of social interactions. We...