Vincent Boucher - Publication dans le journal Econometrica
5 février 2024
Vincent Boucher, professeur au Département d'économique, publiera (avec Michelle Rendall, Philip Ushchev et Yves Zenou) un article dans le journal Econometrica qui aura pour titre "Toward a general theory of peer effects". Voici le résumé et le lien:
There is substantial empirical evidence showing that peer effects matter in many activities. The workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects is the linear-in-means (LIM) model, whereby it is assumed that agents are linearly affected by the mean action of their peers. We develop a new general model of peer effects that relaxes the linear assumption of the best-reply functions and the mean peer behavior and that encompasses the spillover, conformist model, and LIM model as special cases. Then, using data on adolescent activities in the U.S., we structurally estimate this model. We find that for many activities, individuals do not behave according to the LIM model. We run some counterfactual policies and show that imposing the mean action as an individual social norm is misleading and leads to incorrect policy implications.