The Social Multiplier by Edward L . Glaeser

The Social Multiplier

In many cases, aggregate data is used to make inferences about individual level behavior. If there are social interactions in which one person’s actions influence his neighbor’s incentives or information, then these inferences are inappropriate. The presence of positive social interactions, or strategic complementarities, implies the existence of a social multiplier where aggregate relationship...

The Future of Urban Research: Nonmarket Interactions [with Comments]

WHY DOES BALANCED NEWS PRODUCE UNBALANCED VIEWS ? Edward

Many studies find that presentation of balanced information, offering competing positions, can promote polarization and thus increase preexisting social divisions. We offer two explanations for this apparently puzzling phenomenon. The first involves what we call asymmetric Bayesianism: the same information can have diametrically opposite effects if those who receive it have opposing antecedent ...

Measuring Social Interactions

This paper presents on overview of the economics that lies behind social interaction models and briefly discusses the empirical approaches to social interactions. We present a simple model with local interactions, similar to Glaeser, Sacerdote and Scheinkman (1996) but using a continuous action space and starting with optimizing behavior. We then extend the model to include both global and loca...

Measuring Trust

We combine two experiments and a survey to measure trust and trustworthiness—two key components of social capital. Standard attitudinal survey questions about trust predict trustworthy behavior in our experimentsmuch better than they predict trusting behavior. Trusting behavior in the experiments is predicted by past trusting behavior outside of the experiments. When individuals are closer soci...