Abstract: I propose that motive and degree of peer influence are likely to differ between public and private behaviors. To compare peer influence between public and private behaviors quantitatively, I designed and analyzed a large-scale field experiment involving more than 37 million users on WeChat Moments ads. In the experiment, I randomized the number of social cues (i.e. peers’ endorsements of ads) and identified the effects of them on consumers’ public (i.e. liking) and private (i.e. clicking and following) responses to ads. The results show that public responses were associated with significantly more positive effects of social cues than private responses, while both of them were susceptible to a significant peer influence. Tie strength generally facilitated more on public responses than on private responses. Relative to homophily, influence explains more of the temporal clustering of public behaviors than private behaviors. This is among the first papers comparing peer influence in different behavioral settings.

Biography: Shan Huang is currently a PhD Candidate in the IT Group at MIT Sloan. Shan’s research is focused on social influence, network marketing, and motivations to generate and diffuse information in social networks. She is fascinated by designing and analyzing field experiments in massive social networks to understand social behaviors and generate business insights. Her current work examines heterogeneous effects of social influence across different behaviors and various kinds of products. Before beginning her studies at MIT, Shan received a bachelor degree in Management from Tsinghua University and a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems from University of British Columbia. 

Abstract: There has been a lot of focus on encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship all over the world. The intiative has often been taken by governments all over the world through a variety of policy tools. These include tax breaks, subsidies, easier financing for small businesses/start ups, legislation on patents along various dimensions among others. I will present a research design which aims to assess an alternative policy tool which can potentially help promote entrepreneurship. I will briefly go over the research idea, the data I aim to use and discuss the identification strategy.

Biography: Ananya Sen is a post doctoral associate at MIT (Sloan). He received his PhD from the Toulouse School of Economics in September 2016. His research interests centre around the economics of the media, internet and more broadly the digital economy. He mainly uses empirical techniques backed by a theoretical foundation to answer research questions. Before moving to Toulouse, he did the Economics Tripos at Cambridge University, prior to which he obtained a B.A. (Honors) in economics at St. Stephen's College, Delhi University.