Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/88127 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
ZEW Discussion Papers No. 13-098
Publisher: 
Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW), Mannheim
Abstract: 
Endogeneity in network formation hinders the identification of the role social networks play in generating spillovers, peer effects and other externalities. This paper tackles this problem and investigates how the link network between articles on the German Wikipedia influences the attention and content generation individual articles receive. Identification exploits local exogenous shocks on a small number of nodes in the network. It can thus avoid the usually required, but strong, assumptions of exogenous observed characteristics and link structure in networks. This approach also applies if, due to a lack of network information, identification through partial overlaps in the network structure fails (e.g. in classrooms). Exogenous variation is generated by natural and technical disasters or by articles being featured on the German Wikipedia's start page. The effects on neighboring pages are substantial; I observe an increase of almost 100 percent in terms of both views and content generation. The aggregate effect over all neighbors is also large: I find that a view on a treated article converts one for one into a view on a neighboring article. However, the resulting content generation is small in absolute terms.
Subjects: 
Social Media
Information
Knowledge
Spillovers
Large-scale Networks
Natural Experiment
JEL: 
L17
D62
D85
D29
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
794.47 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.