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Choice via Social Influence

Author

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  • Abhinash Borah

    (Department of Economics, Ashoka University)

  • Christopher Kops

    (Heidelberg University)

Abstract

We introduce a theory of socially influenced individual choices. The source of social influence on an individual are his reference groups in society, formed of societal members he psychologically or contextually relates to. Choices made within an individual’s reference groups have an influence on the choices he makes. Speciï¬ cally, we propose a choice procedure under which, in any choice problem, he considers only those alternatives that he can identify with at least one of his reference groups. From this “consideration set,†he chooses the best alternative according to his preferences. The procedure is an interactive one and captures the steady state of a process of mutual social influence. We behaviorally characterize this choice procedure. We also highlight the empirical content of the procedure by relating it to both experimental evidence and real world applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Abhinash Borah & Christopher Kops, 2018. "Choice via Social Influence," Working Papers 06, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:06
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    File URL: https://dp.ashoka.edu.in/ash/wpaper/paper06_0.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Chambers, Christopher P. & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Turansick, Christopher, 2024. "Correlated choice," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(3), July.
      • Christopher P. Chambers & Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Christopher Turansick, 2021. "Correlated Choice," Papers 2103.05084, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2023.
    2. Yusufcan Demirkan & Boyao Li, 2023. "Individual choice under social influence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(2), pages 585-606, August.
    3. Nail Kashaev & Natalia Lazzati, 2019. "Peer Effects in Random Consideration Sets," Papers 1904.06742, arXiv.org, revised May 2021.

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    Keywords

    consideration sets;

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