Research
Working papers
Global Networks, Local Protests - Social Media and the Rise of Fridays for Future
[PDF] Job Market Paper
How do global social media networks shape collective action? To answer this question, I study the diffusion of the Fridays for Future climate movement in Europe. I construct a weekly panel of local protests and exposure to protests in other European locations through social media connections. Using weather shocks as instruments, I find that increasing protest exposure by one standard deviation doubles the probability of local protest activity in the following week. This implies that, on average, a week of protests causes protests in .28 other locations in the sample through spillovers. Further evidence suggests that online networks can substitute previous political networks, improving local coordination and mobilizing new supporters. Moreover, I investigate how social exposure to protests shifts environmental voting. My findings highlight the role of global network effects in organizing collective action in the age of social media.
[PDF] Revise & resubmit, Journal of the European Economic Association
Do communities shape firm-to-firm trade in emerging economies? We study the role of communities in facilitating trade and firm outcomes using data on production networks and firm owners’ community (castes) affiliations for the universe of registered firms in West Bengal, India. We find that firms are substantially more likely to trade, and trade more, with firms from their own caste. Studying the underlying mechanisms, we find evidence consistent both with castes alleviating trade frictions and taste-based discrimination against outsiders. Guided by these stylized facts, we develop a model of firm-to-firm trade in which communities affect pair productivity and matching costs and estimate the model using our reduced-form results. Extending the positive effects of castes on trade to all potential supplier-client pairs would increase the number of network links by 71% and increase average firm-to-firm sales by 21%.
The Returns to Viral Media: The Case of US Campaign Contributions (with M. Draca, N. Mastorocco and A. Ornaghi)
[PDF] Revise & resubmit, Journal of the European Economic Association
Social media has changed the structure of mass communication. In this paper we explore its role in influencing political donations. Using a daily dataset of campaign contributions and Twitter activity for US Members of Congress 2019-2020, we find that attention on Twitter (as measured by likes) is positively correlated with the amount of daily small donations received. However, this is not true for everybody: the impact on campaign donations is highly skewed, indicating very concentrated returns to attention that are in line with a ‘winner-takes-all’ market. Our results are confirmed in a geography-based causal design linking member’s donations across states.