Aristide Houndetoungan, Mathieu Lambotte
arXiv 10 Aug 2026 · Econometrics
arXiv:2608.09219 · PDF · Extracted main text
Individuals are often influenced by their peers because deviating from prevailing behavior entails social costs. However, existing peer effects models typically assume that individuals respond similarly to peers who perform better or worse than they do. This paper introduces a novel structural model of asymmetric peer effects in which conformity incentives depend on whether individuals perform below or above each of their peers. We establish that the model admits a unique equilibrium and show that its parameters can be identified and estimated through simple moment conditions. Applying our method to several student outcomes, we uncover strong evidence of asymmetries in peer effects. We then demonstrate that these asymmetries are highly policy-relevant by studying targeted interventions under budget constraints. Ignoring asymmetries leads to inefficient treatment allocation and substantial welfare losses, reducing welfare to levels comparable to those in a benchmark without social interactions.
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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.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blume, Lawrence E. and Brock, William A. and Durlauf, Steven N. and… (2015) Linear Social Interactions Models | 1.000 | 7 | 3 | 100% |
| 2 | Boucher, Vincent and Rendall, Michelle and Ushchev, Philip and Zenou… (2024) Toward a general theory of peer effects | 1.000 | 6 | 4 | 100% |
| 3 | Galeotti, Andrea and Golub, Benjamin and Goyal, Sanjeev (2020) Targeting interventions in networks | 0.928 | 4 | 3 | 100% |
| 4 | Bramoullé, Y. and Djebbari, H. and Fortin, B (2009) Identification of peer effects through social networks | 0.874 | 8 | 2 | 100% |
| 5 | Eyo I. Herstad and Aristide Houndetoungan and Myungkou Shin (2026) Identification of Heterogeneous Peer Effects self | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 6 | Kleibergen, Frank and Paap, Richard (2006) Generalized reduced rank tests using the singular value decomposition | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 7 | Chernozhukov, Victor and Chetverikov, Denis and Demirer, Mert and Du… (2018) Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 8 | Manski, F. C (1993) Identification of endogenous social effects: The reflection problem | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 9 | Akerlof, George (1997) Social Distance and Social Decisions | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 10 | Boucher, Vincent and Fortin, Bernard (2015) Some challenges in the empirics of the effects of networks | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 46 scored citations.