Although the linear-in-means model is the workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects, its theoretical properties are understudied. In this paper, we investigate how social norms affect individual effort, aggregate effort, and welfare. While individual productivity always positively...

We introduce a price oligopoly model with informed and uninformed consumers, thus creating a new channel of influence for collaborative R&D. Firms can establish pair-wise collaborative research links with other firms to lower production costs. Informed consumers buy from the lowest cost firms...

It is almost self-evident that social interactions can determine economic behavior and outcomes. Yet, information on social ties does not exist in most publicly available and widely used datasets. We present methods to recover information on the entire structure of social networks from...

I develop a model to study two related questions: how bank decisions to form connections depend on fundamentals; and how financial stability depends on bank network structure. In my model, banks are connected through two layers of networks: interbank debts and banks' common investments in...

We investigate the effect of potential entry on the formation and stability of R&D networks considering farsighted firms. We show that the presence of a potential entrant often alters the incentives of incumbent firms to establish a link. In particular, incumbent firms may choose to form an...

We model contagions and cascades of failures among organizations linked through a network of financial interdependencies. We identify how the network propagates discontinuous changes in asset values triggered by failures (e.g., bankruptcies, defaults, and other insolvencies) and use that to...

We highlight that convergence in repeated averaging models commonly used to study cultural traits or opinion dynamics is not equivalent to convergence in Markov chain settings if transition matrices are time-varying. We then establish a new proof for the convergence of cultural traits in the...