Essays on Development, Social Networks, and Information

Essays on Development, Social Networks, and Information PDF Author: Davide Pietrobon
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Essays on Development, Social Networks, and Information

Essays on Development, Social Networks, and Information PDF Author: Davide Pietrobon
Publisher:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Essays on Social Networks in Development Economics

Essays on Social Networks in Development Economics PDF Author: Arun Gautham Chandrasekhar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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(cont.) substitutes for commitment. On net, savings allows individuals to smooth risk that cannot be shared interpersonally, with the largest benefits for those who are weakly connected in the network. The final chapter (co-authored with my classmates Horacio Larreguy and Juan Pablo Xandri) attempts to determine which models of social learning on networks best describe empirical behavior. Theory has focused on two leading models of social learning on networks: Bayesian and DeGroot rules of thumb learning. These models can yield greatly divergent behavior; individuals employing rules of thumb often double-count information and may not exhibit convergent behavior in the long run. By conducting a unique lab experiment in rural Karnataka, India, set up to exactly differentiate between these two models, we test which model best describes social learning processes on networks. We study experiments in which seven individuals are placed into a network, each with full knowledge of its structure. The participants attempt to learn the underlying (binary) state of the world. Individuals receive independent, identically distributed signals about the state in the first period only; thereafter, individuals make guesses about the underlying state of the world and these guesses are transmitted to their neighbors at the beginning of the following round. We consider various environments including incomplete information Bayesian models and provide evidence that individuals are best described by DeGroot models wherein they either take simple majority of opinions in their neighborhood.

Essays in Social Networks and Urban Development

Essays in Social Networks and Urban Development PDF Author: Richard Anthony Ramsawak
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Social networks. An essay

Social networks. An essay PDF Author: Patrick Pearse
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656616426
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 9

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Dana M Boyd describes the online social networks as “web-based services that allow people to build a public or public-private profile within a bounded system, to establish a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and to examine the list of links created by other users in the system.” In social networks the goal is understanding, establishing and maintaining contacts, or working on a specific cause. The typical and widely-known social networks are Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, etc. Another definition of the term “social network” says that “The social network is a social structure of nodes (representing mostly individuals or organizations) linked by specific types of nodes such as ideas, opinions, financial benefits, friendship, tradition, hyperlinks and more. In its simplest form, the social network is a map of all the relative links between nodes that are being studied. These concepts are usually represented by a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.”

Essays in Social Networks and Development Economics

Essays in Social Networks and Development Economics PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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This dissertation is a collection of three essays on social networks and development economics. The first chapter examines the effect of peer networks on self-control problems. I construct a theoretical model to describe the way in which peer networks influence consumption behaviors through social norms, which guide individuals to conform to their friends' behavior. Using comprehensive data from a monthly survey conducted in 16 villages in Thailand from 1999 through 2004, I empirically examine peer effects on temptation consumption patterns, and test the mechanism underlying this relationship. Detailed social network information in the dataset allows the identification of impacts using a friend of a friend (excluded network) as the instrument. The empirical results provide evidence that peer decisions significantly impact individuals' temptation consumption such as alcohol and gambling, as well as savings. These peer effects are driven primarily by social norms, rather than by risk sharing. In the second chapter, co-authored with professor Laura Schechter, we first conduct an extensive review of the disparate literature studying the stability of preferences measured in experiments. Then, we test the stability of individuals' choices in panel data from rural Paraguay, including both experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences collected over almost a decade. Answers to survey questions are quite stable, while experimental measures are less so. If choices made in experiments are not stable, it may be because these choices are influenced by shocks, or because they include high levels of noise. We find no evidence that real-world shocks influence play in games. We suggest that in a developing country context, researchers may want to design simpler experiments or make more use of survey questions to measure preferences. The third chapter explores the impact of weather shocks on farmers' income diversification strategies. I combine historical weather data with household data in India to explore whether farmers employ different responses toward weather shocks in regions with different levels of historical variation. I find that weather shocks can negatively affect agricultural income, but this effect decreases in a riskier place where people have, over time, diversified their income into off-farm employment. I also find evidence that caste-networks can potentially determine people's income diversification strategies. Households who are within a different caste from the majority of their village peers will be more likely to seek for off-farm jobs, while households who are in a similar caste to the majority of the people within the village will seek agricultural wage jobs from others in the village.

Three Essays on Economic Development

Three Essays on Economic Development PDF Author: Vania Bitia Salas García
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Essays on Learning in Social Networks

Essays on Learning in Social Networks PDF Author: Pooya Molavi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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The Development of Social Network Analysis

The Development of Social Network Analysis PDF Author: Linton C. Freeman
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781594577147
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Ideas about social structure and social networks are very old. People have always believed that biological and social links among individuals are important. But it wasn't until the early 1930s that systematic research that explored the patterning of social ties linking individuals emerged. And it emerged, not once, but several times in several different social science fields and in several places. This book reviews these developments and explores the social processes that wove all these "schools" of network analysis together into a single coherent approach.

Essays on Social Networks

Essays on Social Networks PDF Author: Chen, Xi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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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.

Essays on Social Networks

Essays on Social Networks PDF Author: Tuan Quang Phan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social networks
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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"The area of social networks has attracted increasing amount of attention amongst academics, researchers and the popular culture. While a vast majority of research has been within specific disciplines such as economics, computer science and statistics, inter-disciplinary research is required to address complexity issues and dynamics. This dissertation looks to further build an understanding of information networks by bridging the gap across these disciplines."--Leaf iii.