Doctoral Dissertation Research: Identifying Individuals' Causal Effects (Peer Effects) on Participation in Collective Action

博士论文研究：识别个人对参与集体行动的因果效应（同伴效应）

• 批准号: 1647325
• 负责人: Robert Bates
• 金额: $ 1.85万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-04-15 至 2023-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1647325&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Identifying; Individuals

General Abstract: Collective action, or cooperative behavior, is a central concept in economics and political science. Despite this significance, there is relatively little evidence regarding how individuals cause others to participate in cooperative ventures. This study analyzes cell phone data: the time and location of sent/received text messages and calls. The analysis tells us how individuals cause their peers to join in collective action; how this might encourage broader cooperative behavior; and how these processes differ from that of non-collective action areas. Additionally, this research introduces the field to cell phone metadata -- an exceptionally rich data source that can help provide insight into a range of political and social behavior. In particular, it contributes to studies of how technologically-enabled communication affects economic and political behaviors, and situates the research within one of the NSF's Ten Big Ideas, studying work at the Human-Technology Frontier. Technical Abstract:In this proposal, the PI seeks to investigate the causal mechanisms that lead to successful collective action. Prominent theories of collective action argue that individuals choose to participate in an instance of collective action based on two sets of factors: their own preferences and opportunity costs (independent from their peers) and/or on estimates of how many other people will participate, which is only marginally affected by peers' decisions. These approaches are contradicted by a growing empirical literature in behavioral economics, which finds strong evidence that individuals determine their immediate peers' economic choices in many other non-collective action domains. The PI contributes to this line of research in two important areas. First, the project proposes to develop a large-scale empirical study of how individuals lead others to participate in collective action. Second, the research will show how individual-level effects spread through communication networks, manifesting in widespread behaviors. This dissertation takes analyzes several country-years of anonymized cell phone metadata. This data records individuals' communication with other individuals before and during instances of collective action as well as their geographic movement (i.e. call/SMS sender, recipient, timestamp, and location). Using this data, the PI exploits a series of natural experiments to assess (1) individuals' causal effects on their peers' participation in collective action; (2) how these individual causal effects aggregate into collective action; and (3) how these causal processes differ from individuals? causal effects on their peers? economic decisions in non-collective action domains.

集体行动，或合作行为，是经济学和政治学中的一个中心概念。 尽管有这种重要性，但关于个人如何促使他人参与合作企业的证据相对较少。这项研究分析了手机数据：发送/接收短信和电话的时间和位置。 分析告诉我们，个人如何导致他们的同伴加入集体行动;这可能会鼓励更广泛的合作行为;以及这些过程如何不同于非集体行动领域。 此外，这项研究还将手机元数据引入了该领域，这是一个非常丰富的数据源，可以帮助人们深入了解一系列政治和社会行为。特别是，它有助于研究技术支持的通信如何影响经济和政治行为，并将研究置于NSF的十大思想之一，研究人类技术前沿的工作。技术摘要：在这个提案中，PI试图调查导致成功的集体行动的因果机制。 著名的集体行动理论认为，个人选择参与集体行动是基于两组因素：他们自己的偏好和机会成本（独立于他们的同伴）和/或估计有多少其他人会参与，这只会受到同伴决定的轻微影响。这些方法与行为经济学中越来越多的实证文献相矛盾，这些文献发现了强有力的证据，表明个人决定了他们在许多其他非集体行动领域的直接同行的经济选择。PI在两个重要领域为这一研究方向做出了贡献。 首先，该项目提议开展一项关于个人如何领导他人参与集体行动的大规模实证研究。 其次，研究将展示个人层面的影响如何通过传播网络传播，表现在广泛的行为中。本文分析了几个国家多年的匿名手机元数据。 这些数据记录了个人在集体行动之前和期间与其他个人的通信以及他们的地理移动（即呼叫/短信发送者，接收者，时间戳和位置）。利用这些数据，PI利用一系列自然实验来评估（1）个体对同伴参与集体行动的因果效应;（2）这些个体因果效应如何聚集成集体行动;以及（3）这些因果过程如何与个体不同？对同龄人的因果影响非集体行动领域的经济决策。

项目成果

The FAST Algorithm for Submodular Maximization

子模最大化的 FAST 算法

• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research
• 作者: Breuer, Adam;Balkanski, Eric;Singer, Yaron
• 通讯作者: Singer, Yaron