Research

This paper measures social norms using equilibrium beliefs from social interaction models. Building on the Brock-Durlauf framework, we show that the equilibrium belief—the fixed point where expectations about others' behavior coincide with realized aggregate behavior—captures prevailing social expectations within reference groups. Using census data from Indonesia and Brazil, we recover equilibrium norm beliefs for female labor force participation at the regency and municipality level. Regencies in Java show a significant positive conformity effect, meaning women are more likely to participate in the labor force in regencies with higher equilibrium norms. Additionally, this norm measure captures heterogeneous patterns across regency characteristics. We validate this measure by demonstrating its predictive power on outcomes of interest and successfully replicating the method in Brazil. These results demonstrate that equilibrium beliefs provide a scalable approach to measuring social norms where survey data are unavailable, reinterpreting what peer effects models typically treat as a nuisance parameter into a meaningful measure of social expectations.

Link to paper

Presentations:

• International Association for Applied Econometrics (presenter) - Italy, June 2025

• Midwest Econometric Group Conference (presenter) - Illinois, October 2025 

We model the strategic interaction between a well owner and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR) as a simultaneous-move, incomplete-information game. Well owners choose whether to violate environmental regulations, and the LDNR chooses which wells to inspect. We characterize the Bayesian Nash equilibrium as a function of payoff parameters. Using information on all wells in Louisiana, their operators, and LDNR’s inspections and results from FY 2017 to 2024, we estimate the payoff parameters of this game using a nested fixed point (NFXP) penalized maximum likelihood (PMLE) approach. Our estimated parameters align intuitively with the observed inspection and violation rates and reproduce average rates similar to those in the data. We conducted policy simulations where we find that reducing inspection costs leads to higher inspection rates and lower violation rates compared to imposing mandatory penalty fines on violators.

Presentations:

• International Industrial Organization Conference - Pennsylvania, May 2025

• International Association for Applied Econometrics - Italy, June 2025

• World Congress of Econometric Society - Korea, August 2025

This paper studies developers’ platform choice, with a focus on exclusivity, in the sixth-generation video game console market. We estimate a supply-side structural model in which third-party developers choose among single-platform exclusivity and simultaneous multi-platform release, accounting for platform-specific development costs, cross-platform synergies, and exclusivity incentives. We use a revenue-based approach that recovers these primitives without estimating a full demand system, relying on observed revenues and a selection-corrected revenue model to discipline payoffs across platform choices. In a static setting, we find substantial asymmetries in development costs and synergies across platforms, as well as sizable benefits associated with permanent exclusivity. Extending the model to allow developers to endogenously choose launch timing substantially reduces the estimated exclusivity benefits—particularly for platforms with smaller installed bases—indicating that part of what appears as an exclusivity premium in static models reflects the option value of waiting rather than direct platform compensation.