Research Papers

We introduced demographers to the social interactions approach in economics by developing an analytical framework that shows how the rational-choice approach of neoclassical economics can be combined with social factors. We also presented models to provide qualitative insights into fertility transitions.

We wanted to add to the strand of demography literature based on contextual effects in fertility by emphasizing how the existing approaches can be embedded in a structural model of choices that embodies both contextual effects as well as feedback from the actual decisions of group members.

No topic in demography has received as much theoretical and empirical attention as the study of fertility transitions. Yet, no single theory explains the historical record of transitions in a sufficiently comprehensive way to dominate its competitors.

We describe a range of methods that have been proposed to study interactions in economic and social contexts. We provide a general choice-based framework for modeling such interactions, analyze the econometrics of these models, and review some empirical work on interactions.

We want to provide a framework that illustrates the relationship between interactions-based models and models in statistical mechanics to improve modeling strategies in this field.

The role of interactions in economic outcomes has become an important area of research over the last decade. Interactions-based models have been applied to a wide range of contexts both within economics and within social science more generally.

We question current empirical practice in the study of growth. We aim to outline a perspective on empirical growth research that will both address some of the major criticisms to which this research has been subjected and facilitate policy-relevant empirics.

We argue that much of the modern empirical growth literature is based on assumptions about regressors, residuals, and parameters that are implausible from the perspective of both economic theory and the historical experiences of the countries under study.

The endogenous growth models pioneered in Romer (1986, 1990) and Lucas (1988) have produced a sea change in the sorts of questions around which macroeconomic research is focused. In empirical macroeconomics, efforts to explain cross-country differences in growth behavior since World War II have become a predominant area of research. The implications of this work for policymakers are immense.

We generalized the empirical analysis of the Solow growth model to account for country-specific heterogeneity, relaxing the common assumption that all countries have identical aggregate production functions. Our analysis revealed significant country-specific variations in Solow parameters linked to differences in initial income levels.

We aimed to enhance the explanatory power of the Solow growth model by incorporating country-specific factors. This approach allows for a more accurate representation of the diverse economic environments across different countries.

Recognizing and incorporating country-specific heterogeneity in growth models improves their explanatory value and accuracy. This enhanced model provides better insights into the economic growth processes of individual countries, leading to more tailored and effective economic policies.

We provide a perspective on why interactions-based models represent a natural and powerful language for studying economic and related phenomena for fellow economists as well as the broader community of social scientists.

Despite the advances in interactions-based methods in economics, their use in economic analysis is still in its infancy. Further, considerable skepticism exists in many quarters as to the utility of these methods.

Interactions-based approaches provide a powerful way of understanding various phenomena based on the collective behaviors of a group of interacting, heterogeneous agents. We believe that a common general structure underlies such apparently different problems as the level of out-of-wedlock births, the agglomeration of firms in particular regions, and the diffusion of technologies.

We survey recent efforts to study the interrelationship between group and individual behavior by addressing several methodological questions

Social economics research melds together ideas traditionally pursued separately in economics and sociology. Sociology conceptualizes the role of social influences on individual preferences and cognition. Economics provides methods to model aggregate behavior as the outcome of individual decisions. This new social economics promises to provide new insights into social and economic dynamics.

The new social economics brings a richer view of human behavior and human interactions to the analysis of economic phenomena.