Download or read book Essays on the Role of Social Interactions and Networks in Marketing written by Hema Yoganarasimhan and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Social Interactions and Networks written by Ryo Nakajima and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays On Social Interaction In Three Kinds of Networks written by Nghi Truong Cong Thanh and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Networks and Social Interaction written by Dean Knox and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation presents new models and experimental designs for understanding network behavior and social interaction. The first paper develops a model for a new kind of data, "path data," that represents the sequential decisions made by actors navigating social, geographic, and other kinds of networks. The model is validated in a benchmark test, then used to measure sectarian influences in the ways that Sunni and Shia individuals navigate the streets of Baghdad in a smartphone-based field activity. The second paper uses a novel experimental design to examine the social network search patterns employed by both sects. Using smartphone and self-reported data, the paper shows that differing search strategies result in differential access to public services in Baghdad. The third paper presents a new model for measuring rhetorical style and other modes of speech in political deliberation. The model is validated in a benchmark test of conflictual speech in political debates.

Download or read book Essays on Social Networks written by Chen, Xi and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is composed of a literature review, Chapter 1, an in-depth analysis of data used in the dissertation, Chapter 2, and three main essays, Chapters 3-5, on relative concerns, social interactions and unintended consequences. To uncover the nature of social interactions, Chapter 3 studies how rural residents form social networks, and what explains the recent gift spending escalation. Chapter 4 focuses on a typical market that carries significant social stigma - paid blood plasma donation in China. I explore the role of peer interactions in the networks. Building upon it, Chapter 5 evaluates how in utero exposures to frequent and costly social events for the impoverished families impacts early child nutrients intake and health status. Chapter 1 This chapter reviews the recent literature on inequality and income distribution in rural China utilizing panel datasets. On the basis of the review, this chapter identifies new research areas with existing panel datasets and my new household panel dataset, i.e., the IFPRI-CAAS, which could shape future research. Chapter 2 The tradition of keeping written gift record in many Asian countries offers researchers an old-fashioned but underutilized means of data collection for development and social network study. This chapter documents a long-term spontaneous household gift record I collected from the field. I discuss the data collection and network structure, highlighting its unique features for studies at household and dyadic link level. Chapter 3 The growth rate of gift and festival spending in some developing countries has been much higher than that of consumption and income. I test three competing explanations of the phenomenon-peer effect, status concern, and risk pooling-based on the IFPRI-CAAS and the gift network data. I find that gift-giving behavior is largely influenced by peers in reference groups. Status concern is another key motive for keeping up with the Joneses in extending gifts. In contrast, risk pooling does not seem to be a key driver of the observed gift-giving patterns. I also show that large windfall income triggers the escalation of competitive gift-giving behavior. Chapter 4 Despite the resultant disutility, people are still engaged in behavior carrying social stigma. Empirical studies on stigma behavior are rare, largely due to the formidable challenges of collecting data on stigmatized goods and services. Combining the IFPRI-CAAS and the gift network data, I examine frequent blood sales, widely regarded as a stigmatized behavior and the driving force of public health crises. Using a novel spatial identification strategy, I find social interactions with heterogeneous intensities affect plasma sales decisions. Peer effects are directional and work through preference interactions that reduce stigma. Families with unmarried son are more likely to sell plasma to offset costs of getting married in a tight marriage market, such as a bigger house, a higher bride price and a more lavish wedding banquet. Chapter 5 Participating in and presenting gifts at funerals, weddings, and other ceremonies held by fellow villagers have been regarded as social norms. However, it is more burdensome for the poor to take part in these social occasions than the rich. Because the poor often lack the necessary resources, they are forced to cut back on basic consumption, such as food, in order to afford a gift to attend the social festivals. Using the IFPRI-CAAS and the gift dataset, this chapter shows that children born to mothers in poor families who are exposed to a greater number of ceremonies during their pregnancies are more likely to display a lasting detrimental health impact.

Download or read book Three Essays on Social Interactions and Networks written by Shenzhe Wang and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation focuses on the social interaction with economic perspectives. This first essay tests peer effects in the workplace with piece-rate compensation. Reference groups are defined as the geographical peers in undirected networks. A series of spatial econometric models are employed to investigate the social effects. We identify and present evidence for endogenous effects (production) while find no evidence for exogenous effects (characteristics). We also find that the heterogeneity of endogenous effects depends on workers and their peers' characteristics, which is defined as conditional endogenous effects in this paper. Our results suggest that rearranging workers' seats according to their personal characteristics could lead to changes in overall productivity. From a field experiment design, the second essay studies the relation between social distance and training outcomes. We test our hypothesis through two measures: the tips shared with trainees by trainers, and the exist test results of trainees. We find that trainers share more tips to socially closer trainees, and the communications between trainers and trainees have a significant indirect effects on the number of tips shared. The productivity of trainees are also higher when they are socially closer to their trainers. The third essay discusses the identification problem in social peers effect studies. By considering the canonical linear in means model with the rank condition in simultaneous equations model, it suggests that the group structures determines the identifiablity of the desired social effects estimates. Transitive networks are not identified unless there are more information contained in the between group structures. Modifications to the conventional model are also suggested with respect to the recovery of transitive networks and potentially incomplete networks.

Download or read book Essays on Social Influence Network Effects and Use of Social Media in Impacting Consumer Behavior written by Kamer Toker Yildiz and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wide adoption of the Internet and social media has changed how consumers communicate amongst themselves and how companies communicate with their customers. Therefore, investigating the role of social interactions is important in understanding how consumers influence each other through online as well as offline channels for both marketing researchers, and companies that wish to leverage social media more effectively. This dissertation consists of two essays focusing on social influence, network effects and their marketing implications in today's socially engaged world. The first essay focuses on peer influence and studies the differential impact of online and offline social interactions on consumer's repeat usage behavior, and the effectiveness of monetary incentives in the presence of these social interactions. For this purpose, we develop a modeling framework that parses out the impacts of these individual effects and investigates their relative impact on behavior using a unique data set from a wellness program. We find that the effect of online interactions does indeed vary significantly in the presence of offline interactions and that ignoring the latter may well bias the estimates of the former. Furthermore, our results show that monetary incentives relative to social interactions have a significant, though lesser impact on repeat usage behavior. We finally offer several strategic implications by exploring a variety of scenarios through simulation analysis based on the model estimates. The second essay introduces anonymous others ("non-peer") influence in addition to peer influence and compares the relative influence of these two sources on consumers' product evaluations in an experimental setting. We show that contrary to the existing intuition, peers are not always more influential than non-peers and that the influence of these two sources depends on the proportion of people who endorse the product (i.e. , endorsement status: majority/minority endorsement). Interestingly, we find that peers have more positive influence than non-peers only under minority (but not majority) endorsement (experiment 1). We further show that peer influence manifests under minority endorsement because of consumers' endorsement and product fit perceptions (experiment 2). However, this effect diminishes if the endorsement is framed negatively (experiment 3) and gets stronger when the numeric size of the source is large (experiment 4). We discuss these findings in light of prevailing source influence theories and offer suggestions for marketing actions and firm strategy. We believe that this dissertation contributes not only to the marketing literature but also to other disciplines including social psychology, economics and operations research while offering useful implications for companies leveraging social media for both internal and external purposes.

Download or read book Three Essays on Social Interactions and Education written by Rokhaya Dieye and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this thesis is to investigate identification of peer effects and their application on a large set of outcomes, going from school attendance to obesity. The relevance of this research relies on three main points: 1) it allows better measurrement of effects stemming from social interactions, thus providing some answer to the numerous econometric issues that make the study of peer effects a lot challenging; 2) it improves our comprehension of negative social phenomena, including the incidence of school dropouts and obesity; 3) it proposes better public policies aiming at fighting against such phenomena by exploiting social network effects that contribute to amplify them. The different objectives of this thesis are investigated in three different chapters. The first chapter proposes a new strategy for estimating the influence of the social network on individual decisions in a network context using randomized experiments. It combinates the structural social network model developed by Bramoullé et al. [2009] and randomized experiments. New identification conditions that mostly require balance in the characteristics of friends between treatment and control groups are provided. The model is estimated and validated on experimental data collected for the evaluation of a scholarship program in Colombia. By design, randomization is at the student-level. Friendship data reveals that treated and untreated students interact together. Besides providing evidence of peer effects in schooling, the chapter concludes that ignoring peer effects would have led to an overestimation of the program actual impact. The aim of the second chapter is to propose a model that accounts for heterogeneity in peer effects between individual categories in a network setting. Identification conditions of a network-based interactions model that generalizes the one proposed by Bramoullé et al. [2009] are derived, and heterogeneity of peer effects is allowed within and between categories of individuals. Using the Add-Health dataset, the study explores heterogeneity in adolescents weight using both gender and racial categorizations. The results show that the positive endogenous effect found using the homogeneous model is actually heterogeneous when considering both gender and racial categorizations, as for example, females seem to be more influenced by their female friends than by their male friends. While the first two chapters consider friendship networks in an attempt to identify the effects that result from social interactions, the third chapter considers the course-overlaps network. The model is local agregate and has the feature, unlike other studies of peer effects, that the interaction matrix accounts for the extensive and intensive margins. Interactions of this type are better to design school policies. The chapter then proceeds to estimation of peer effects in overall GPA and GPAs in both mathematics and science courses using the Add Heakth and AHAA datasets. The results reveal the presence of positive and significant social interaction effects using both 2SLS and GMM estimation techniques.

Download or read book Ranks Peers Networks written by Alexander Fischer and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays in Game Theory written by Daniel Andrés Hojman and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on the Ritual of Social Relations written by Cyril Daryll Forde and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1962 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Non Aboriginal material.

Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Social Interactions written by Julie Pinole and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three self-contained essays on the economics of social interactions. The first chapter is coauthored with Lorenzo Verstraeten. Knowing that Individuals interact with their peers, we study how a social planner can intervene, changing these interactions, in order to achieve a particular objective. When the objective is welfare maximization, we describe the interventions for games of strategic complements and strategic substitutes. We show that, for strategic complements, the planner uses resources to target central players; while she divides individuals into separated communities in the case of strategic substitutes. We study which connections she targets in order to achieve these goals. The second chapter is coauthored with Lorenzo Verstraeten and analyzes a model of contagion on social network. We ask how a social planner should intervene to prevent contagion. We characterize the optimal intervention and the cost associated. We discuss the intuition behind the choice of the planner and we provide comparative static on the cost of intervention for different type of network. In the third chapter I develop a theoretical study about groups relationship and ask whether intragroup cooperation crowd-out intergroup cooperation. I consider a gift-giving game where cooperation endogenously arises, within and across groups. Cooperation is sustained through peer punishment with the help of a group specific monitoring technology. I specify under which conditions cooperation crowding-out occur. I identify two classes of equilibrium: a Sorting equilibrium where guilty players prefer to be matched outside their group due to a less efficient Out-Group monitoring technology, and a Non Sorting equilibrium where the higher level of In-Group cooperation makes it more attractive for everybody. I then compare their welfare properties and draw conclusions on optimal punishment levels.

Download or read book Essays on Social Networks and Information Worker Productivity written by Lynn Wu and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thesis, I examine how information, information technology, and social networks affect information worker productivity. The work is divided into three essays based on tracking detailed communication patterns of information workers in the high-tech industry. Essay 1: "Social Network Effects on Performance and Layoffs: Evidence from the Adoption of a Social Networking Tool." By studying the changes in employees' networks and performance before and after the introduction of a social networking tool, I find that a structurally diverse network (low in cohesion and rich in structural holes) has a positive effect on work performance. The size of the effect is smaller than traditional estimates, suggesting that omitted individual characteristics may bias the estimated network effect. I consider two intermediate mechanisms by which a structurally diverse network is theorized to improve work performance, information diversity (instrumental) and social communication (expressive), and quantify their effects on two types of work outcomes: billable revenue and layoffs. Analysis shows that the information diversity derived from a structurally diverse network is more correlated with generating billable revenue than is social communication. However, the opposite is true for layoffs. Friendship, as approximated by social communication, is more correlated with reduced layoff risks than is information diversity. Field interviews suggest that friends can serve as advocates in critical situations, ensuring that favorable information is distributed to decision makers. This, in turn, suggests that having a structurally diverse network can drive both work performance and job security, but that there is a tradeoff between either mobilizing friendship or gathering diverse information. Essay 2: "Identification of Influence: An Experimental Platform for Understanding the Relationship between Social Networks and Performance." This study creates an experimental platform for identifying the relationship between social networks and performance. While a large body of literature has examined the correlations between certain network topologies and performance, little research has shown a definitive causal linkage. I address this problem through conducting three sets of randomized field experiments using an on-line experimental platform at a large information technology firm. The platform enables randomly selected employees to achieve certain network characteristics. By examining work performance before and after the experiment, I plan to show the causal relationship between networks and productivity. Essay 3: "Water Cooler Networks: Performance Implications of Informal Face-to-Face Interaction Structures in Information-Intensive Work." This study examines the performance characteristics of face-to-face interaction networks and finds that their structural properties are important for effective knowledge transfer and productivity. We argue that network theory should incorporate the implications of media choice, and particularly differences between face-to- face and electronic communication, when assessing how networks affect individual performance. We introduce a new methodology, using Sociometric badges, to record precise data on face-to-face interaction networks for a group of workers in a large IT manufacturing firm over a one-month period. Linking these data to detailed performance metrics, we find that 1) network cohesion is associated with higher worker productivity, in contrast to previous findings in email data; 2) cohesion in face-to-face networks is associated with even higher performance during complex tasks, suggesting that cohesion complements information-rich media for transferring the complex knowledge needed to complete such tasks; 3) while information-seeking from many colleagues creates disruptions, more interactions with a few key strong-tie informants speeds up work. Face-to-face networks have more explanatory power than physical-proximity networks, suggesting that information flows in actual conversations (rather than individuals' correlated exposure to common environmental factors through physical proximity) are driving our results. These results augment our understanding of how media choice and network structure interact, shedding light on the organizational effects of face-to-face interaction. The methods and techniques we introduce are replicable, creating opportunities for new lines of research into the consequences of face-to-face interaction in organizations.

Download or read book Essays on the Economics of Mental Health and Social Interactions written by Matthew Daniel Lang and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third chapter examines the implications of incorporating altruism into networks. When players act altruistically, the number of possible efficient graphs increases. In a perfectly altruistic network, the efficient networks will always be stable, although increasing altruism does not monotonically decrease the tension between stable and efficient networks. These results are shown in detail using a four-player network, however the main results hold for a network of any size.

Download or read book Ranks Peers Networks written by Alexander Fischer and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Social Networks written by Dennis C. O'Dea and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In three chapters I study the formation of social networks, and the impact the structures that arise may have in various economic settings. First, I develop a model of social network formation with heterogeneous agents and incomplete information. The model predicts an equilibrium in which agents sort themselves into ``insiders'' and ``outsiders.'' Insiders form many links to one another, and form a dense core structure in the network, while outsiders coordinate their links by connecting to an insider, and form a sparse periphery . Networks form stochastically, contingent on the private values of each agent, and include more realistic structures than networks arising among homogenous agents. I characterize the set of equilibria and identify its extremes, which have a natural interpretation as public good provision. One extreme, when agents are all insiders, is equivalent to the provision of a pure public good, and suffers from free-riding. The other extreme, when every agent but one is an outsider, the equilibrium is equivalent to the provision of an excludable public good, and suffers from coordination problems. I next develop expand this model to study the provision local public goods, such as information, that is shared along the network. Individuals may choose to provide a public good that is not excludable among their peers in a social network. The network is formed endogenously, as agents non-cooperatively choose their social ties. I characterize the set of equilibria, and examine the relationship between public good provision and social network formation. I find that the architecture of the social network determines the strategic interaction between link formation and public good provision; for some networks, links are strategic substitutes, so that agents attempt to free-ride on their peer's links. This leads to higher levels of public good provision, and specialization in roles: Agents either invest in the public good or form links, but not both. For other networks, however, links are strategic complements, so that agents coordinate their links by connecting to central agents. This leads to lower levels of public good provision, and less specialization; some agents will both link and invest, leading to lower welfare. Finally I present a model of time allocation between formal and informal labor supply where workers learn of informal job opportunities from their peers in a social network. In addition to formal income taxation and enforcement, individuals0́9 labor supply decisions depend on the number of their peers with informal jobs and the strength of social ties. Workers allocate more time to informal activities when tax enforcement is lax and job information transmission is good. More connected social networks (e.g. wheel, complete) feature lower average income but higher average utility than poorly connected social networks (e.g. star, empty). Average income may be non-monotonic in tax enforcement.

Download or read book Three Essays on Social Networks and Schools written by Yunzheng Zheng and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researchers have been increasingly interested in the phenomenon of social networks in education, a research area that provides more opportunities to study the relationships among individuals or organizations in our educational system. The goal of this dissertation was to understand the effect of various social networks on outcomes by investigating various relationships in the educational system. To achieve the goal, three distinct, but related, essays comprised this dissertation. In the first essay, I examined the effects of interschool networks on student achievement. By using the data collected from the High Impact Leadership (HIL) program and employing the hierarchical linear model (HLM) method, I investigated how different interschool relationships, indicated by various interschool network measures, were associated with student mathematics and reading achievement, and the growth of student mathematics and reading achievement. Key findings included (a) schools that reported to have a stronger relationship with other schools had better, and more growth in, mathematics achievement; (b) schools with reciprocal relationships had better, and more growth in, mathematics and reading achievement; and (c) schools connected to more influential schools in the network had better, and more growth in, mathematics and reading achievement. In the second essay, I inquired into the relationship between teacher-to-teacher relationships and student achievement. By using the meta-analysis method, I specifically focused on (a) the relationship between teacher's individual relationship with other teachers and student mathematics and reading achievement; (b) the relationship between teacher-to-teacher relationship at the organization level (i.e., school or grade team) and student mathematics and reading achievement; and (c) how three frequently used theoretical frameworks in studying teacher-to-teacher relationships--teacher network, teacher collaboration and professional learning community (PLC), at either individual or organizational level--were related to student mathematics and reading achievement. Key findings included (a) teachers' individual relationships were not related to student achievement; (b) the relationships in schools or grade teams were significantly positively related to student mathematics and reading achievement; and (c) at the organizational level, different theoretical frameworks were not related to the level of student achievement, but did result in different levels of heterogeneity (i.e., heterogeneity was low for PLCs and teacher networks and was high for teach collaborations). In the third essay, I conducted a meta-analysis study on the relationship between (a) principals' network position in school-wide networks, measured by principals' degree centrality, and (b) school leadership, trust and innovation climate. I found that principals' network position had a strong positive relationship with leadership climate and a moderate relationship with trust and innovation climate, with low to moderate level of heterogeneity. The findings in the three essays have implications for policy, practice, and research. From the perspectives of policy and practice, generally speaking social networks in education are associated with better outcomes, and should be promoted in the educational system. Social networks appear to be an important vehicle to improve outcomes in the context of the bifurcated educational system. Directions for future research were also discussed.