IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/jeurec/v8y2010i1p62-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Peer Pressure

Author

Listed:
  • Antoni Calvó-Armengol
  • Matthew O. Jackson

Abstract

We present a model where agents care about their neighbors' actions and can pressure them to take certain actions. Exerting pressure is costly for the exerting agent and it can impact the pressured agents by either lowering the cost of taking the action (which we call "positive pressure" ) or else by raising the cost of not taking the action (which we call "negative pressure" ). We show that when actions are strategic complements, agents with lower costs for taking an action pressure agents with higher costs, and that positive pressure can improve societal welfare. More generally, we detail who gains and who loses from peer pressure, and identify some circumstances under which pressure results in fully (Pareto) optimal outcomes as well as circumstances where it does not. We also point out differences between positive and negative pressure. (JEL: Z13, D62, C72, D85) (c) 2010 by the European Economic Association.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoni Calvó-Armengol & Matthew O. Jackson, 2010. "Peer Pressure," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(1), pages 62-89, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:8:y:2010:i:1:p:62-89
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1542-4774/issues
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jackson, Matthew O. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Games on Networks," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. Tomas Rodriguez Barraquer, 2013. "From sets of equilibria to structures of interaction underlying binary games of strategic complements," Discussion Paper Series dp655, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    3. Bruno Cardinale Lagomarsino & Matías Gutman & Lucía Freira & María Laura Lanzalot & Maximiliano Lauletta & Leandro Malchik & Felipe Montaño Campos & Bianca Pacini & Martín Rossi & Christian Valencia, 2015. "Peer Pressure and Externalities: Evidence from a field experiment," Working Papers 125, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Dec 2015.
    4. Dey, Oindrila & Das, Abhishek & Gupta, Gautam & Banerjee, Swapnendu, 2017. "Favouritism Or Fairness?: A Framed Laboratory Experiment," MPRA Paper 80214, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:8:y:2010:i:1:p:62-89. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.