Working Paper: NBER ID: w10409
Authors: Jeffrey E. Harris; Beatriz González López-Valcárcel
Abstract: We analyzed cigarette smoking among people aged 15 - 24 in approximately 90,000 households in the 1992 - 1999 U.S. Current Population Surveys. We modeled social influence as an informational externality, in which each young person's smoking informs her peers about its coolness.' The resulting family smoking game,' with each sibling's smoking endogenous, may have multiple equilibria. We found that the pro-smoking influence of a fellow smoker markedly exceeded the deterrent effect of a non-smoking peer. The phenomenon of asymmetric social influence has implications for financial markets, educational performance, criminal behavior, and other areas of inquiry where peer influence is important.
Keywords: Cigarette Smoking; Young People; Social Influence
JEL Codes: I12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| presence of a smoking peer (C92) | probability of another young person smoking (J13) |
| one more smoking housemate (Y70) | log-odds of smoking (C25) |
| one more non-smoking housemate (R21) | log-odds of smoking (C25) |
| high-performing peer influence (C92) | overall group performance (L25) |
| cigarette price changes (D41) | smoking rates (I12) |