In the last few years I started to work on several new ideas. Some of these ideas are now working-papers, others work in progress and others are part of an ERC advanced grant which I have submitted this year.
The overall idea of what I am working on is to understand empirically and theoretically the effects that interventions mediating social and economic interactions have on socio and economic outcomes. Once you think about interventions that mediate social and economic interactions you can create a simple taxonomy. One type of interventions change the individual characteristics of the agents interacting in a network. For example, in a social media, I can target news to individuals and this may affect the opinion of the targeted individuals. Such a change may then propagate to others via social interaction. I think about these interventions as peer-interventions. Another type of interventions are those that change “who interact with whom”. In a social media, the platform owner can change the likelihood that a user with specific characteristics observes the information posted by another user with certain characteristics. In a digital marketplace, the platform can affect which offers a buyer observes that have been posted by the sellers. That is, the platform affects the buyers-sellers network.
The ability of institutions/organisations to mediate interactions is not a new one. But, to the best of my knowledge, there is neither a systematic theoretical study on the effect of such interventions, nor a broad empirical understanding of the implications of these interventions. By exploring this topic further I hope I can provide some suggestion to policy makers on how to construct such interventions to improve outcomes, and how to regulate such interventions when they may be used by third parties to create distortions in markets or inefficiencies in society.
Working papers
2022. On the Efficiency of Large Resale Networks, with D. Condorelli and L. Renou.
2022. Market segmentation through information. Elliott, M., Galeotti., A., Koh., A, and Li, W.
2022. Discord and Harmony in Networks, with B. Golub, S. Goyal and R. Rao.
Work in progress theory
2023. Matching and information design in a marketplace. Elliott, M., Galeotti., A., Koh., A, and Li, W.
2022. Taxes and market power: a principal components approach, with B. Golub, S. Goyal, E. Talamas, O. Tamuz.
2023. Network Effects Design, with David Myatt
Work in progress empirical
I have collected a large data set of MBA students at London Business School. The data set provides information on the academic choices and outcomes of MBA, on their social activities as well as they career outcomes. This allows to quantify accumulation of human and social capital of MBA students within their 18 months programme. Incoming students at LBS (as is common in business school) are divided in streams and the first six months students follow courses (essentially only) with their own stream peers. Anecdotally, the stream becomes an important reference group for a student. The way in which the composition of the streams are determined, which is random in many dimensions, is an example of peer-intervention. The project will study how this peer intervention affects the acquisition of human and social capital of MBA students and its effect on career outcomes.
2023. Entrepreneurial Peer Effects, with Adam Szeidl and David Abraham
Ideas under development
Andrea Galeotti 