TY  - JOUR
AU  - Harris,Jeffrey E.
AU  - Lopez-Valcarcel,Beatriz
TI  - Asymmetric Social Interaction in Economics: Cigarette Smoking Among Young People in the United States, 1992-1999
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10409
PY  - 2004
Y2  - April 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10409
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10409.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jeffrey E. Harris
Department of Economics
MIT, Room E52-252F
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA  02139
Tel: 617/253-2677
Fax: NA
E-Mail: jeffrey@mit.edu

Beatriz González López-Valcárcel
E-Mail: bvalcarcel@dmc.ulpgc.es
AB  - 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.
ER  -