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.

一般摘要：集体行动或合作行为是经济学和政治学中的核心概念。 尽管有这种意义，但关于个人如何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：已发送/接收的短信和通话的时间和位置。 分析告诉我们个人如何使同龄人加入集体行动；这如何鼓励更广泛的合作行为；以及这些过程与非采集行动领域的过程有何不同。 此外，这项研究将该领域介绍给手机元数据 - 一种非常丰富的数据源，可以帮助您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沟通如何影响经济和政治行为，并将研究置于NSF的十个大思想之一中，并在人类技术前沿研究工作。技术摘要：在此提案中，PI试图研究导致成功采取集体行动的因果机制。 集体行动的著名理论认为，个人选择根据两组因素参加集体行动的实例：他们自己的偏好和机会成本（独立于同龄人）和/或估计其他人将参加多少人，这只会受到同伴决策的极大影响。这些方法与行为经济学中越来越多的经验文献相抵触，该方法发现有力的证据表明，个人在许多其他非采取行动领域中确定了同龄人的经济选择。 PI在两个重要领域有助于这一研究。 首先，该项目提议开发一项大规模的实证研究，以了解个人如何引导他人参与集体行动。 其次，研究将表明如何通过通信网络传播个体效果，以广泛的行为表现出来。本文分析了几个国家年度的匿名手机元数据。 该数据记录了个人在集体行动及其地理运动（即呼叫/SMS发件人，接收者，时间戳和位置）之前和期间与其他人的沟通。使用这些数据，PI利用了一系列自然实验来评估（1）个体对同龄人参与集体行动的因果影响； （2）这些个人因果影响如何汇总为集体行动； （3）这些因果过程与个人有何不同？因果关系对同龄人的影响？非综合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