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Estimating Peer Effects Using Partial Network Data

Vincent Boucher, Aristide Houndetoungan

arXiv 9 Sep 2025 · Econometrics · publishedThe Review of Economics and Statistics (2025) · 13 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2509.08145 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We study the estimation of peer effects through social networks when researchers do not observe the entire network structure. Special cases include sampled networks, censored networks, and misclassified links. We assume that researchers can obtain a consistent estimator of the distribution of the network. We show that this assumption is sufficient for estimating peer effects using a linear-in-means model. We provide an empirical application to the study of peer effects on students' academic achievement using the widely used Add Health database, and show that network data errors have a large downward bias on estimated peer effects.

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The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Graham, B. S (2017) An econometric model of network formation with degree heterogeneity0.58531100%
2Boucher, V. and I. Mourifié (2017) My friend far, far away: a random field approach to exponential random graph models self0.40511100%

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arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Inference for Two-Stage Extremum EstimatorsFor comments and suggestions, we are grateful to Arnaud Dufays, Ulrich Hounyo, Mathieu Marcoux, Antoine Djogbenou, Frank Windmeijer, Xiaohong Chen, Jean-Marie Dufour, Jad Beyhum, Prosper Dovonon, Désiré Kédagni, Pamela Giustinelli and Florian Pelgrin. We also thank the participants of the EDHEX Business School econometric seminar, the CIREQ econometric seminar, the 58th Annual Meetings of the CEA, and the 2024 conference of IAAE. Replication codes for the results from this research are available at https://github.com/ahoundetoungan/InferenceTSE0.73732
2Flexible Imputation of Incomplete Network Data0.73732
3Estimating Social Network Models with Link Misclassification0.64422
4Heterogeneity in peer effects for binary outcomes0.64422
5Spillovers of Program Benefits with Missing Network Links0.40511
6Count Data Models with Heterogeneous Peer Effects under Rational Expectations0.40511
7Model-Based Inference and Experimental Design for Interference Using Partial Network Data0.40511
8Team Networks with Partially Observed Links0.40511
9Estimating peer effects in noisy, low-rank networks via network smoothing0.40511
10Network-Adjusted GMM Estimation under Network Uncertainty0.40511