David M J Lazer
Biographic Data
| ID | 237292 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David M J Lazer |
| GIVEN NAMES | David M J |
| FAMILY NAME | Lazer |
| SIGNATURE | LAZER D M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northeastern University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 389 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Pathways of Peer Influence on Major Choice
Peers influence students' academic decisions and outcomes. For example, several studies with strong claims to causality demonstrate that peers affect the choice of and persistence in majors. One remaining issue, however, has stymied efforts to translate this evidence into actionable interventions: the literature has not grappled adequately with the fact that in natural settings, students typically select most of their peers. The bulk of causal ev…
Using Administrative Records and Survey Data to Construct Samples of Tweeters and Tweets
Social media data can provide new insights into political phenomena, but users do not always represent people, posts and accounts are not typically linked to demographic variables for use as statistical controls or in subgroup comparisons, and activities on social media can be difficult to interpret. For data scientists, adding demographic variables and comparisons to closed-ended survey responses have the potential to improve interpretations of …
The Incidental Pundit
Informal discussion plays a crucial role in democracy, yet much of its value depends on diversity. We describe two models of political discussion. The purposive model holds that people typically select discussants who are knowledgeable and politically similar to them. The incidental model suggests that people talk politics for mostly idiosyncratic reasons, as by‐products of nonpolitical social processes. To adjudicate between these accounts, we d…
Politics with the People
Many citizens in the US and abroad fear that democratic institutions have become weak, and continue to weaken. Politics with the People develops the principles and practice of 'directly representative democracy' - a new way of connecting citizens and elected officials to improve representative government. Sitting members of Congress agreed to meet with groups of their constituents via online, deliberative town hall meetings to discuss some of the…
Connecting to Constituents
Legislative websites are increasingly important in the practice of representation. Since adapting old practices to new technology entails uncertainty, the authors expect legislative offices to learn website representation practices from each other. Using data from the 2006 and 2007 official home pages of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the authors find that web design practices regarding the content of legislative websites diffuse w…
Representative Communication
We examine the speed and extent to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives adopt emerging Web-based communication technologies. Given the growing centrality of communication for governance and the Web's growing role in effective public outreach, a rational actor approach would suggest that members of Congress should aggressively exploit online communication technology. And this should especially be true for freshman members. We test th…
Estimating Treatment Effects in the Presence of Noncompliance and Nonresponse
If ignored, noncompliance with a treatment or nonresponse on outcome measures can bias estimates of treatment effects in a randomized experiment. To identify and estimate causal treatment effects in the case where compliance and response depend on unobservables, we propose the parametric generalized endogenous treatment (GET) model. GET incorporates behavioral responses within an experiment to measure each subject's latent compliance type and ide…
Who Wants To Deliberate-And Why
Interest in deliberative theories of democracy has grown tremendously among political theorists, political scientists, activists, and even government officials. Many scholars, however, are skeptical that it is a practically viable theory, even on its own terms. They argue(inter alia)that most people dislike politics and that deliberative initiatives would amount to a paternalistic imposition. Using two large national samples investigating people'…
Friends, Brokers, and Transitivity
Why and how do groups share information in politics? Most studies of information exchange in politics focus on individual-level attributes and implicitly assume that communication between any two policy actors is independent of the larger communication network in which they are embedded. We develop a theory stating that the decision of any lobbyist to inform another lobbyist is heavily conditioned upon their mutual relationships to third parties.…
The Strength of Weak Ties in Lobbying Networks
How does policy information flow through Washington `issue networks'? And how does information flow determine which lobbyists get access in policy-making? Drawing upon the `strength of weak ties' argument, the authors argue that policy information passes more through acquaintances (`weak ties') than through close, trusted, contacts (`strong ties'). They support this argument in an analysis of data on lobbying networks in health-care policy-making…
Who Wants To Deliberate-And Why
Interest in deliberative theories of democracy has grown tremendously among political theorists, political scientists, activists, and even government officials. Many scholars, however, are skeptical that it is a practically viable theory, even on its own terms. They argue(inter alia)that most people dislike politics and that deliberative initiatives would amount to a paternalistic imposition. Using two large national samples investigating people'…
Friends, Brokers, and Transitivity
Why and how do groups share information in politics? Most studies of information exchange in politics focus on individual-level attributes and implicitly assume that communication between any two policy actors is independent of the larger communication network in which they are embedded. We develop a theory stating that the decision of any lobbyist to inform another lobbyist is heavily conditioned upon their mutual relationships to third parties.…
The Strength of Weak Ties in Lobbying Networks
How does policy information flow through Washington `issue networks'? And how does information flow determine which lobbyists get access in policy-making? Drawing upon the `strength of weak ties' argument, the authors argue that policy information passes more through acquaintances (`weak ties') than through close, trusted, contacts (`strong ties'). They support this argument in an analysis of data on lobbying networks in health-care policy-making…
The Incidental Pundit
Informal discussion plays a crucial role in democracy, yet much of its value depends on diversity. We describe two models of political discussion. The purposive model holds that people typically select discussants who are knowledgeable and politically similar to them. The incidental model suggests that people talk politics for mostly idiosyncratic reasons, as by‐products of nonpolitical social processes. To adjudicate between these accounts, we d…
Estimating Treatment Effects in the Presence of Noncompliance and Nonresponse
If ignored, noncompliance with a treatment or nonresponse on outcome measures can bias estimates of treatment effects in a randomized experiment. To identify and estimate causal treatment effects in the case where compliance and response depend on unobservables, we propose the parametric generalized endogenous treatment (GET) model. GET incorporates behavioral responses within an experiment to measure each subject's latent compliance type and ide…
Using Administrative Records and Survey Data to Construct Samples of Tweeters and Tweets
Social media data can provide new insights into political phenomena, but users do not always represent people, posts and accounts are not typically linked to demographic variables for use as statistical controls or in subgroup comparisons, and activities on social media can be difficult to interpret. For data scientists, adding demographic variables and comparisons to closed-ended survey responses have the potential to improve interpretations of …
Connecting to Constituents
Legislative websites are increasingly important in the practice of representation. Since adapting old practices to new technology entails uncertainty, the authors expect legislative offices to learn website representation practices from each other. Using data from the 2006 and 2007 official home pages of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the authors find that web design practices regarding the content of legislative websites diffuse w…
Representative Communication
We examine the speed and extent to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives adopt emerging Web-based communication technologies. Given the growing centrality of communication for governance and the Web's growing role in effective public outreach, a rational actor approach would suggest that members of Congress should aggressively exploit online communication technology. And this should especially be true for freshman members. We test th…
Pathways of Peer Influence on Major Choice
Peers influence students' academic decisions and outcomes. For example, several studies with strong claims to causality demonstrate that peers affect the choice of and persistence in majors. One remaining issue, however, has stymied efforts to translate this evidence into actionable interventions: the literature has not grappled adequately with the fact that in natural settings, students typically select most of their peers. The bulk of causal ev…
The Strength of Weak Ties in Lobbying Networks
How does policy information flow through Washington `issue networks'? And how does information flow determine which lobbyists get access in policy-making? Drawing upon the `strength of weak ties' argument, the authors argue that policy information passes more through acquaintances (`weak ties') than through close, trusted, contacts (`strong ties'). They support this argument in an analysis of data on lobbying networks in health-care policy-making…
Friends, Brokers, and Transitivity
Why and how do groups share information in politics? Most studies of information exchange in politics focus on individual-level attributes and implicitly assume that communication between any two policy actors is independent of the larger communication network in which they are embedded. We develop a theory stating that the decision of any lobbyist to inform another lobbyist is heavily conditioned upon their mutual relationships to third parties.…
Who Wants To Deliberate-And Why
Interest in deliberative theories of democracy has grown tremendously among political theorists, political scientists, activists, and even government officials. Many scholars, however, are skeptical that it is a practically viable theory, even on its own terms. They argue(inter alia)that most people dislike politics and that deliberative initiatives would amount to a paternalistic imposition. Using two large national samples investigating people'…
Representative Communication
We examine the speed and extent to which members of the U.S. House of Representatives adopt emerging Web-based communication technologies. Given the growing centrality of communication for governance and the Web's growing role in effective public outreach, a rational actor approach would suggest that members of Congress should aggressively exploit online communication technology. And this should especially be true for freshman members. We test th…
Estimating Treatment Effects in the Presence of Noncompliance and Nonresponse
If ignored, noncompliance with a treatment or nonresponse on outcome measures can bias estimates of treatment effects in a randomized experiment. To identify and estimate causal treatment effects in the case where compliance and response depend on unobservables, we propose the parametric generalized endogenous treatment (GET) model. GET incorporates behavioral responses within an experiment to measure each subject's latent compliance type and ide…
Connecting to Constituents
Legislative websites are increasingly important in the practice of representation. Since adapting old practices to new technology entails uncertainty, the authors expect legislative offices to learn website representation practices from each other. Using data from the 2006 and 2007 official home pages of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the authors find that web design practices regarding the content of legislative websites diffuse w…
Politics with the People
Many citizens in the US and abroad fear that democratic institutions have become weak, and continue to weaken. Politics with the People develops the principles and practice of 'directly representative democracy' - a new way of connecting citizens and elected officials to improve representative government. Sitting members of Congress agreed to meet with groups of their constituents via online, deliberative town hall meetings to discuss some of the…
The Incidental Pundit
Informal discussion plays a crucial role in democracy, yet much of its value depends on diversity. We describe two models of political discussion. The purposive model holds that people typically select discussants who are knowledgeable and politically similar to them. The incidental model suggests that people talk politics for mostly idiosyncratic reasons, as by‐products of nonpolitical social processes. To adjudicate between these accounts, we d…
Using Administrative Records and Survey Data to Construct Samples of Tweeters and Tweets
Social media data can provide new insights into political phenomena, but users do not always represent people, posts and accounts are not typically linked to demographic variables for use as statistical controls or in subgroup comparisons, and activities on social media can be difficult to interpret. For data scientists, adding demographic variables and comparisons to closed-ended survey responses have the potential to improve interpretations of …
Pathways of Peer Influence on Major Choice
Peers influence students' academic decisions and outcomes. For example, several studies with strong claims to causality demonstrate that peers affect the choice of and persistence in majors. One remaining issue, however, has stymied efforts to translate this evidence into actionable interventions: the literature has not grappled adequately with the fact that in natural settings, students typically select most of their peers. The bulk of causal ev…
Political science (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Social Media and Politics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Public Administration (4 works) · Public relations (4 works)