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The underlying channels through which peer influence operates in durable good adoption can affect the ability of marketers to leverage them. In this paper, we assess whether the visibility of peers' adoption decisions leads to greater peer influence. The context we study is residential rooftop solar panels. We exploit the plausibly exogenous location and orientation of peers' rooftop solar panels relative to proximate roadways and visual obstructions, such as vegetation, in order to determine whether geographically proximate peer installations increase a household's probability of solar adoption more if they are visible from the road. Highlighting the role of peer influence at the very local level, we find evidence of peer influence for non-visible solar arrays only within 100m on the same street. We also demonstrate that installations that are visible from the street exert peer influence at distances of at least 500m. A peer installation within 500m that is visible from proximate roadways at angles totaling 90 degrees exerts the same magnitude peer effect as a non-visible installation within 100m. The effect of peer visibility is moderated by the economic value the peers receive from installing solar, providing suggestive evidence of social learning through visual information.

In light of the debate over inclusive education, this paper evaluates the impact of exposure to special needs (SN) peers. More classroom peers with SN lower performance, the probability of entering postcompulsory education, and income at ages 17 to 25. SN students and students at the lower end of the achievement distribution suffer most from higher inclusion. We analyze the effects of reallocation policies to alleviate negative externalities, and demonstrate that inclusion is preferable to segregation in terms of maximizing average test scores.

This paper estimates the heterogeneity in peer effects among research scientists in terms of network position. I propose a new measure, brokerage degree, that determines the extent to which a scientist depends on a coauthor to provide him unique access to other scientists further away. I apply this measure to the coauthorship network of medical scientists. I show that network position is crucial for productivity by facilitating access to nonredundant knowledge. Identification results from variation in brokerage degree among coauthors linked to a star scientist who dies. A one standard deviation increase in the brokerage degree of a deceased star is associated with a 10% decrease in annual publications of his coauthor. By applying brokerage degree to topics, I provide evidence that access to knowledge flows embodied in scientists further away can account for a large proportion of the identified heterogeneity effect. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation.

This paper studies the persistent effects of short-term peer exposure on long-run performance in a college setting. I exploit the random assignment of undergraduates to peer groups during a mandatory orientation week and track the students’ performance over four years (until graduation). Assignment to orientation week groups with high levels of peer ability is associated with lower performance during the first year at college and a higher probability of early dropout. These adverse effects are driven entirely by the exposure of low-ability students to high-ability peers. Beyond the first year, exposure to higher peer ability during the orientation week negatively affects selection into the college’s most popular major (business administration) and final grade point average. Taken together, the findings suggest that the composition of short-term peer groups matters for individual choices and long-run performance outcomes. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.

Motivated by recent initiatives to increase transparency in procurement, we study the effects of disclosing information about previous purchases in a setting where an organization delegates its purchasing decisions to its employees. When employees can use their own discretion, which may be influenced by personal preferences, to select a supplier, the incentives of the employees and the organization may be misaligned. Disclosing information about previous purchasing decisions made by other employees can reduce or exacerbate this misalignment, as peer effects may come into play. To understand the effects of transparency, we introduce a theoretical model that compares employees’ actions in two settings: one where employees cannot observe each other’s choices and one where they can observe the decision previously made by a peer before making their own. Two behavioral assumptions are central to our model: that employees are heterogeneous in their reciprocity toward their employer, and that they experience peer effects in the form of income inequality aversion toward their peer. As a result, our model predicts the existence of negative spillovers as a reciprocal employee is more likely to choose the expensive supplier (which gives the employee a personal reward) when the employee observes that a peer did so. A laboratory experiment confirms the existence of negative spillovers and the main behavioral mechanisms described in our model. A surprising result not predicted by our theory is that employees whose decisions are observed by their peers are less likely to choose the expensive supplier than the employees in the no-transparency case. We show that observed employees’ preferences for compliance with the social norm of appropriate purchasing behavior explain our data well. This paper was accepted by Yuval Victor Martinez de Albeniz, operations management.

Utilizing a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in traditional clusters of apparel and textile firms in Vietnam, this paper investigates peer effects on firm managers’ decisions to participate in seminars on export promotion. We invited 131 randomly selected firm representatives to three one-day seminars on export promotion. We use the number of randomly invited peers to identify peer effects. We further decompose the invited peers into peers invited to the same seminar, those invited to the earlier seminars, and those invited to the later seminars. We find that the former has a positive effect on firms' participation, whereas the latter two have no significant effect. These results imply that peer effects on participation primarily arise from the benefits of face-to-face interactions. The presence of positive peer effects suggests that multiple equilibria in terms of the share of participants within each village of firms may emerge, which is also consistent with our observations.

We investigate peer effects from corporate real estate. Shocks to real estate prices shift firms' debt capacity, which has a significant impact not only on firm investment but also on the investment of peer firms. This peer effect from corporate real estate is stronger when firms or their peers have more investment opportunities; financially constrained firms invest more out of their own price shocks, while the peer effect is stronger for unconstrained firms; and we find significant peer effects within groups of small and large firms, respectively. Firms finance additional investment from peer real estate shocks using cash reserves. Overall, we document a new channel through which real estate is an economically significant determinant of corporate investment.

Work environments commonly entail multi-worker production, a regulatory setting, and an overarching managerial structure. Guided by an economic model of individual production, I examine how such elements influence worker performance in the empirical setting of NHL goaltenders, observed over multiple seasons. Results reveal new evidence of positive workplace peer effects but reduced goalie performance in relation to heightened regulation of capital equipment use and turnover in goalies specialized managers, their team goaltending coaches. New goalie coaches do appear to help goaltenders mitigate unfavorable effects of workplace regulation, part of larger evidence illustrating the role of managerial quality in work environments.

We investigate whether science and technology parks (STPs) can stimulate on-park firms’ R&D investments and subsequently spread out to off-park peer firms. We employ a novel setting derived from a ...

Gender equality is the future towards which society and companies have to move, and it is thus essential to know what efforts organisations are making. In this paper, we analyse the transparency of multinationals in matters of gender, in accordance with the requirements determined by the global reporting initiative (GRI) and United Nations (UN). The results suggest that higher levels of gender equality support the decision to report all GRI+UN indicators, a decision that has been maintained over time and is not moderated by peer disclosure. This behaviour facilitates the inclusion of companies in different reputation lists as a consequence of a greater commitment to gender equality, although these rankings also assess the completeness of the information when considering the disclosure of the GRI+UN indicators. The effect differs according to the practices of peer firms.

Despite all the promising benefits, the adoption of fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs) is expected to require a long transitional process. While innovators and early adopters tend to adopt the technology fast, most will gradually adopt the technology after varying periods. Meanwhile, today’s social networking technologies have strengthened the influence of peer effects and caused noticeable changes to decision-making behavior. To date, there is relatively little study on how peer effects influence autonomous vehicles (AVs) adoption. The current paper explores how AV adoption is influenced by various factors, especially by different levels of individual susceptibility and prior-AV knowledge. Susceptibility is a latent variable measuring to what extent individuals will follow the influence of their peers in AV adoption. Prior-AV knowledge is another latent variable that measures people’s knowledge about AVs, which will further impact their price sensitivity. A stated preference (SP) survey was carried out in five cities in China. 1132 new car buyers were surveyed, resulting in 3855 valid records for vehicle preference. The Integrated Choice and Latent Variable (ICLV) Model is used to measure the susceptibility and prior-AV knowledge attributes, and identify their contribution to the heterogeneity of AV adoption intentions. The results show that many demographic factors influence the adoption of AVs. Younger individuals, those with higher education levels, higher income, and more driving experience are more readily influenced by their peers. High market penetration has a significant influence on FAV adoption, but to a varying degree depending on the individual susceptibility level. People with prior-AV knowledge, who are more likely to be older drivers, have no children under 18, have higher incomes and higher education levels, are found to be less sensitive to vehicle price.

Academic achievements play an important role in an individual’s professional development, and are also considered one of the main characteristics of an education system. Academic achievements are associated with multiple factors, including the social environment of students. In this paper we review the studies that use stochastic actororiented models to examine the effects of social networks on academic achievements. We consider both the results and designs of existing studies and outline potential avenues for future research. We demonstrate that the majority of studies analyze the networks of positive relationships in schools. Only a few studies are based on data from universities. We also conclude that the majority of studies are based on data from western democracies. These findings can be considered as a basis for further empirical analysis.

Internationalisation is a major trend in higher education worldwide. Yet, little evidence is given on the net impact of international students on national economies. This study addresses this gap by estimating the benefits against the costs driven by international students in Belgium and its Flemish region in particular. Using a unique combination of various sources of micro-data, the results show net positive benefits that exceed costs by a factor ranging between 2.4 (lower bound) and 3.1 (upper bound) times. The results vary highly with the level of education, as the ratio is the lowest for doctoral students (1.2–1.6) and highest for master students (5.1–6.3). The effect is mainly driven by a high stay rate of international students, who are likely to work in the country after graduation. When considering indirect effects, our results show that there are no significant peer effects due to the presence of international students in the classroom. ispartof: Higher Education vol:82 issue:3 pages:459-476 status: published

In many facets of life, individuals make evaluations that they may update after consulting with others in their networks. But not all individuals have the same positional opportunities for social interaction in a given network or the ability and desire to make use of those opportunities that are available to them. The configuration of a person’s network can also alter how information is spread or interpreted. To complicate matters further, scant research has considered how positions in social networks and the valence of network content interact because of the difficulty of (a) separating the “player” from the position in networks and (b) measuring all germane content in a particular network. This research develops a novel experimental platform that addresses these issues. Participants viewed and evaluated an entrepreneurial video pitch and were then randomly assigned to different networks, and positions within networks, and thus various opportunities for peer influence that were orthogonal to their network history, inclinations, attributes, or capabilities. Furthermore, all the content of social interaction, including its valence, was recorded to test underlying assumptions. Results reveal that those assigned to a position with brokerage opportunities in a network updated their evaluations of the entrepreneurial video considerably more negatively.

Using panel data on IT investment choices and outcomes, we perform the first empirical test of the existence of peer effects and social learning in Jordanian banks’ IT investment decisions. We fit a linear in means model of social interaction and find evidence of peer effects in banks’ choice of IT investment, consistent with the presence of contextual or endogenous effects. Further, a bank’s IT investment increases significantly with other banks’ lagged IT investments, consistent with the presence of social learning. However, a bank’s IT investment does not respond to other banks’ lagged profitability, consistent with the presence of the IT productivity paradox.

Previous studies have investigated the factors that influence firms’ decision engaging in government innovation programme, but some important horizontal factors have been largely ignored, such as t...

Problem definition: Misconduct, such as theft, is a major problem in operational settings, and staffing decisions can either amplify or mitigate this problem as workers influence their peers’ behavior. Peers are known to influence coworker productivity and likely also affect counterproductive behaviors. Academic/practical relevance: Many studies have shown how mechanisms such as helping, knowledge transfer, teaching, and social pressure generate productivity peer effects in service and other settings. Yet few papers empirically examine these effects in counterproductive behaviors. We argue that while the same mechanisms driving productivity spillovers also generate peer effects in misconduct, an additional effect—strategic peer response—reflects how coworkers, under managerial monitoring, adjust misconduct in response to peers’ daily behavior. An additional contribution of this paper is to identify the effect of peers on operational performance in a firm setting. Methodology: We use transaction and theft data from 83,153 servers at 1,049 restaurants across 46 states in the United States. We employ instrumental variable (IV) models to account for both reflection problems and correlated error terms in same-day peer theft. We use Monte Carlo simulations to present how biases identified by a combination of ordinary least squares (OLS) and IV models suggest that managerial oversight might generate negative correlation in the same-day error terms of peers that reflects strategic peer responses. Results: Our results show that although servers are more likely to steal when working with high-theft peers, they steal less as peers steal more on a given day. We also show that this negative correlation in daily peer theft is higher under an information technology system that increases managerial oversight by reporting likely theft to managers. Importantly, we demonstrate how reflection effects can significantly amplify even small peer-effect coefficients to have large organizational implications. Our parameter estimates indicate that doubling a single worker’s average theft amount will increase total theft in an average restaurant by 76%. Doubling all workers’ theft amounts increases totals by 550%. Finally, we show that the positive peer effect from high-theft coworkers only exists for new workers in their first three to five months on the job, consistent with imprinting mechanisms that include knowledge transfer and norms. Managerial implications: The results show that the costs of employing unethical workers is higher than the direct cost of those workers’ misconduct because their behavior spills over into coworkers’ actions and amplifies through reflection effects. Yet our results also suggest that this contagion can be mitigated by managerial oversight. So long as there is sufficient monitoring of misconduct, workers will strategically limit such behavior in response to peers.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the conditions necessary for the effective functioning of disability insurance in the framework of an overlapping-generations model. Unlike preceding studie...

Purpose Information is often available to consumers through their social networks. Focusing on dairy consumers in India, this paper aims to present evidence of peer effects in consumers’ attitudes towards various food safety attributes and food safety practices. Design/methodology/approach Unobserved individual heterogeneities are crucial confounders in the identification of social (endogenous) effects. The identification is based on exploiting within-consumer variation across different aspects of attitude (or practices) related to food safety. Findings This paper uses a novel identification strategy that allows for average effects across attributes and practices to be estimated. Using the strategy, though this paper cannot estimate endogenous effects in each attribute or practice, this paper is able to identify such effects averaged over attributes or practices. Research limitations/implications Cross-sectional study, caste affiliation is not defined at the right level of granularity. Practical implications The results suggest that information campaigns aimed at creating awareness about food safety can have social multiplier effects, and this also translates into changes in the practices followed to mitigate food safety risks. Social implications In health-related awareness and practices, there are well-established cases of multiplier effects. The most significant example of this is the Pulse Polio campaign in India, where an awareness drives through social multiplier effects had such a significant impact that in 2012 India was declared polio-free. Perhaps, a similar campaign in matters related to food safety could be very fruitful. Originality/value The methodology and the issue are unique. Little exists in assessing social networks in the context of food safety.

This article presents evidence on peer effects among U.S. agricultural workers. On average, we find that a 10% increase in peer productivity increases focal worker productivity by 2.8%. This effect is modified by the ability and gender of workers and peers. Exceptionally slow workers are least responsive to peers and have pronounced negative spillovers on the productivity of their coworkers—their presence decreases productivity by 2%. Male workers are more responsive to their peers than female workers—a 10% increase in peer productivity increases the productivity of men by 3% and women by 2.6%. Workers are also generally more responsive to peers of similar ability and gender. Workers increase their speed the most when in the presence of peers with abilities just above their own. Male workers are more responsive to male peers than female peers, and female workers are more responsive to female peers.

The German reunification experiment provided sudden access to previously unavailable financial products, supported by knowledgeable practitioners. This setting offers new perspectives on participation, inertia, and product diffusion. Controlling for characteristics, East Germans experienced a jump in securities participation to a level comparable to West Germans’ participation immediately following reunification, and to an even higher level for consumer debt, while exhibiting inertia in previously accessible products. They showed no signs of subsequent retreat. Lower financial resources are the most important characteristic explaining lower East German participation in all asset classes, while expectations and peer effects drive the higher East German debt participation.

This study uses location-specific data to investigate the role of spatially mediated peer effects in farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture practices. The literature has shown that farmers trust other farmers and one way to increase conservation practice adoption is through identifying feasible conservation practices in neighboring fields. Estimating this effect can help improve our understanding of what influences the adoption and could play a role in improving federal and local conservation program design. The study finds that although spatial peer effects are important in the adoption of conservation tillage and diverse crop rotation, the scale of peer effects are not substantial.

Team branding plays a key role in attracting corporate sponsorship for the multi-billion dollar business of college sports. In this paper, we study peer effects in the dynamic brand revenue evolution of major college sports teams that play in the same National Collegiate Athletic Association conferences. To examine the peer effects in each conference, we propose a new dynamic model that can identify conference-specific peer effects while capturing the dynamic evolution of brand revenue. Our model estimation results reveal significant positive peer effects in the six conferences — ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, SEC, and Pac-12 — where the brand revenue of teams benefit from other teams in the same conference. Our modeling approach also sheds light on the effect of a conference switch on a team's brand revenue by showing the difference between predicted brand revenue with a switch and the predicted brand revenue without a switch.

The present study aimed to examine the effects of primary social factors on the smoking behaviors according to the smoking stages—initiation and continuation—among Korean adolescents. We used the clustered logistic regression method to examine whether the primary social factors significantly influence smoking behaviors among Korean adolescents at two different stages with a cross-sectional study for 9 years. We found that primary social factors significantly influenced adolescent smoking in both stages, and peer effects for adolescent smoking were much clearer in the smoking continuation stage. In addition, adolescents initiating smoking early tend to continue their smoking with high probability. The impacts of primary social factors are robust on adolescent smoking, particularly in the smoking continuation stage.

This paper discusses the formation of peers in an anonymous higher education setting using a unique data set of industrial engineering students. For identification, we exploit the random assignment of students into groups and student performance before students met. We compare two different settings for potential peer formation: a voluntary freshman orientation week organized by the students’ union and a mandatory group work course. It is only in the case of the group work course that we report persistent impacts on subsequent academic achievement. In line with our theoretical reasoning, peer effects exist between groups of two students who were already similar before.

This paper examines the extent to which social pressures can foster greater responsiveness among public officials. I conduct a non-deceptive field experiment on 1400 city executives across all 50 states and measure their level of responsiveness to open records requests. I use two messages to prime social pressure. The first treatment centers on the norm and duty to be responsive to the public’s request for transparency. The second treatment is grounded in the peer effect literature, which suggests that individuals change their behavior in the face of potential social sanctioning and accountability. I find no evidence that mayors are affected by priming the officials’ duty to the public. The mayors who received the peer effects prime were 6–8 percentage points less likely to respond, which suggests a “backfire effect.” This paper contributes to the growing responsiveness literature on the local level and the potential detrimental impact of priming peer effects.

Social interactions are widely understood to influence consumer decisions in many choice settings. This paper identifies causal peer effects in residential water conservation during the summer using variation from movers. We classify high-resolution remote sensing images to provide evidence that conversions of green landscaping to dry landscaping are a primary determinant of the reductions in water consumption. We also find suggestive evidence that without a price signal, peer effects are muted, indicating a possible complementarity between information and prices. These results inform water use policy in many areas of the world threatened by recurring drought conditions. (JEL D12, L95, Q25, Q54, Z13)

This paper investigates peer effects on student weight. Taking advantage of a national survey of middle schools in China, we exploit the BMI variation in randomly assigned classrooms. We find that ...

Problem definition: We study a compliance problem of healthcare workers (HCWs) in hospitals where hand hygiene compliance rates are generally low. We first analyze how peer effects impact compliance decisions of HCWs and then analyze how monitoring can improve compliance. Academic/practical relevance: Inducing process compliance of human operators is an ongoing challenge in operations management with significant implications on the productivity and the quality of the products or services rendered by standardized processes. In healthcare, low hand hygiene compliance of HCWs is the leading cause of hospital-acquired infections, which can be largely prevented by HCWs following standardized hand hygiene processes. Methodology: Using a game-theoretical approach, we model HCWs’ reactions to peers’ (non-)compliance to determine their equilibrium compliance levels. We integrate the model with a disease-transmission model to determine how the compliance affects disease prevalence in a hospital ward. Results: When the process compliance is endogenous, HCWs play a mixed strategy in equilibrium between complying and noncomplying. We establish that a macrolevel hand hygiene compliance rate of HCWs can result from a combination of four different types of microlevel noncompliance: free-riding, safe-playing, self-regarding, and opportunistic behaviors. Finally, we show that the marginal effect of monitoring on reducing disease prevalence depends on clinical factors, HCWs’ interpersonal learning, and other integration factors like goal setting. Managerial implications: The results demonstrate that the monitoring intervention may not effectively prevent disease transmission without understanding the microlevel behaviors of noncompliant HCWs. Our results provide an explanation as to why there is a significant variability in the effectiveness of management intervention as observed in practice.

We show that a firm's one-year-ahead capital investments and inventory increase (decrease) when peer firms' Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) narratives become more optimistic (pessimistic). This finding is driven by firms that access peer firms' 10-K filings within seven days of their filing date, and remains after controlling for other determinants of a firm's investments as well as economic connections between the firm and peer firms. Moreover, a firm's investment response varies based on content in peer firms' MD&A narratives. For instance, a firm makes more (less) capital investments when peer firms become more optimistic in their narratives that discuss the industry and investments (competition). Our findings provide broad insights on the information content and proprietary costs of MD&A disclosures. Data Availability: All non-textual data are available from sources identified in the text. Textual data generated by this study are available upon request. JEL Classifications: L1; D25.

Pilot and demonstration (P&D) projects are commonly deployed to catalyze early adoption of technology but are poorly understood in terms of mechanism and impact. We conceptually distinguish unique functions of pilots and demonstrations, then examine whether they accelerate adoption in the case of green building technology. To identify effects on adoption, we develop a difference-in-difference-in-differences strategy, exploiting variation in timing, location, and technologies of green building P&Ds. Results indicate local quarterly green building adoption rates double following completion of a P&D project. Further analyses examine mechanisms driving this effect. The results suggest green building demonstration projects create learning externalities, proliferating technology diffusion in local markets and through building owner networks. Together, these results suggest that investments in P&D projects by public and private actors can lower costs for subsequent adoption.

We investigate the role of heterogeneous peer effects in encouraging healthy lifestyles. Our analysis revolves around one of the largest and most extensive databases about weight loss that track individual participants’ meeting attendance and progress in a large national weight loss program. The main finding is that, although weight loss among average-performing peers has a negative effect on an individual’s weight loss, the corresponding effect for the top performer among peers is positive. Furthermore, we show that our results are robust to potential issues related to selection into meetings, endogenous peer outcomes, individual unobserved heterogeneity, lagged dependent variables, and contextual effects. Ultimately, these results provide guidance about how the weight loss program should identify role models.

This paper is the first comprehensive empirical study on the economics of health crowdfunding (HCF) campaigns. We develop a new theoretical framework that focuses on the channels Donor-Patient-Psychology and Donor-Donor-Psychology to examine campaign funding speed. Our data highlight that, on average, campaign funding goals are achieved more rapidly if the patient is an infant girl, and if campaign descriptions are more comprehensive but less technical (easier to read). Furthermore, campaigns begun around holidays are funded more quickly, with the highest funding speed found for Christian holidays. We posit that this indicates a “warm-glow” effect. Examining donations controlling for campaign fixed effects, we document strong and economically significantly negative donor-to-donor peer effects, where contributions by donors with public profiles may be crowded out by the previous contributions of their peers.

Using U.S. equity mutual fund data, we show that portfolio pumping—an illegal trading activity that artificially inflates year- and quarter-end portfolio returns—is more pronounced among single-managed funds compared with team-managed ones. The return inflation by team-managed funds is 45% lower than by single-managed funds at year-ends. Also, portfolio pumping decreases as team size increases. These results are driven by peer effects among teams and, sometimes, amplified by less convex flow-performance relation in team-managed funds. Our findings are robust to differences in fund governance, manager career concerns, local networks, fund family policies, and changes in the SEC’s enforcement policies.

We hypothesize that the arrival of star analysts improves the performance of incumbent financial analysts, while the departure of star analysts has the opposite effect. Our results consistent with this hypothesis are concentrated primarily in the tests related to star arrivals. Our findings are robust to an instrumental variable approach and a falsification test. In addition, we hypothesize that the impact of the arrival/departure of star analysts is more pronounced when the star analyst covers the same industry as the incumbents (especially for industries with high uncertainty), when the star analyst is more established, when the incumbent analysts are less experienced, and when the brokerage house has fewer existing star analysts. Overall, our paper offers evidence of peer effects among financial analysts, mainly through the arrival of star analysts. Ministry of Education (MOE) Published version Zhang acknowledges the financial support from the Singapore Ministry of Education for providing research funding (RG75/16 and RG163/17). Do acknowledges the financial support from UQ Business School (BEL new staff start-up funds).

What are the firm’s determinants to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)? Under what conditions is it likely to occur? Evidence suggests three possible mechanisms that affect a firm’s engagement in csr: the role of growth in value added within an industry, peer effects and workers’ attitudes. Results are consistent with the institutional framework theory, which suggests that firms engage in CSR practices in times of economic prosperity. Further evidence shows that peer effects are also relevant on a firm’s decision to take part in csr. Regarding workers’ attitudes, this paper provides evidence of a weak link between labor force preferences and a firm’s decision to engage in CSR.

This paper uses merged customs and administrative data from Serbian firms to quantify the impact of neighboring firms’ importing experience on the decision to start sourcing inputs from new markets. The analysis finds that firms are more likely to start importing from a new market if neighboring firms in the same industry and location have experience importing from that market and if those firms are increasing their imports over time. Further, the results support a distinction between imports and exports for the decision to enter foreign markets; unlike exports, import sourcing choices are not independent across countries. The analysis finds that imports across origins are substitutes, not complements. The paper also investigates origin-country and firm heterogeneity. The results indicate that the impact of neighboring firms’ importing experience is greater for source countries in the European Union market and for firms that are high productivity, foreign owned, and previous importers. Together, these findings suggest that a firm’s spatial connections are an important contributor to its access to global markets as sources for inputs.

This paper analyzes the importance of one commonly proposed mechanism potentially driving ability peer effects in the classroom: peer-to-peer social interaction. At a large university, first-year students are randomly assigned to a year-long tutorial group and to one of two subgroups within their tutorial group. The university encourages social interaction within, and not between, these subgroups at the start of the year. Hence, each student can divide her tutorial peers into close and distant peers. We find spillovers on student performance originating from close peers only. Distant peers are unimportant. This implies that peer-to-peer social interactions drive peer effects.

This paper investigates the role of peer effects in the employee welfare policies of organizations. Using US panel data for a sample of 11,451 firm-year observations from 1996 to 2017, we find that firms’ employee welfare decisions are driven by their peers and show that peer firms play a significant role in defining corporate employee welfare policies. Our findings are robust to various sensitivity checks, including alternative definitions of employee welfare, alternative peer proxies and several identification strategies. Our additional analysis shows that herding behaviour is prevalent in followers, who mimic leaders’ behaviour, but we do not find any such relationship for industry leaders. Further, we show evidence suggesting that mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures are driving the peer effects. Finally, we examine the economic consequences of peer mimicking in employee welfare policies and show that it improves focal firms’ value and innovation. Our findings on firms’ peer effects and herding behaviour have policy implications.

We investigate the role of peer effects in the diffusion of an important water‐saving irrigation technology: low energy precise application (LEPA). Using detailed irrigation behavior data for growers in the High Plains Aquifer region of Kansas covering 1990–2014, we find clear evidence of peer influence in adoption of LEPA, net of environmental factors. Specifically, an additional neighboring LEPA installation within 1 km increases the probability of adoption by about 0.3 percentage points, on average, and this effect diminishes with distance. Our empirical estimates indicate that in the absence of peer effects, LEPA adoption would have been about 10% lower (1,000–1,600 fewer installations) per year. In addition, we find that growers install LEPA in response to higher energy prices.