Markus Mobius
Biographic Data
| ID | 4279037 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Markus Mobius |
| GIVEN NAMES | Markus |
| FAMILY NAME | Mobius |
| SIGNATURE | MOBIUS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4725-7896 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Do Celebrity Endorsements Matter? A Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination in Indonesia
Do celebrity endorsements matter? And if so, how can celebrities communicate effectively? We conduct a nationwide Twitter experiment in Indonesia promoting vaccination. Celebrity messages are 72% more likely to be passed on or liked than similar messages without a celebrity’s imprimatur. In total, 66% of the celebrity effect comes from authorship, compared to passing on messages. Citing external medical sources decreases retweets by 27%. Phone su…
Naïve Learning with Uninformed Agents
The DeGroot model has emerged as a credible alternative to the standard Bayesian model for studying learning on networks, offering a natural way to model naïve learning in a complex setting. One unattractive aspect of this model is the assumption that the process starts with every node in the network having a signal. We study a natural extension of the DeGroot model that can deal with sparse initial signals. We show that an agent’s social influen…
Comparing Estimates of News Consumption from Survey and Passively Collected Behavioral Data
Surveys are a vital tool for understanding public opinion and knowledge, but they can also yield biased estimates of behavior. Here we explore a popular and important behavior that is frequently measured in public opinion surveys: news consumption. Previous studies have shown that television news consumption is consistently overreported in surveys relative to passively collected behavioral data. We validate these earlier findings, showing that th…
Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks
We conducted online field experiments in large real-world social networks in order to decompose prosocial giving into three components: (1) baseline altruism toward randomly selected strangers, (2) directed altruism that favors friends over random strangers, and (3) giving motivated by the prospect of future interaction. Directed altruism increases giving to friends by 52% relative to random strangers, whereas future interaction effects increase …
Trust and Social Collateral
This paper builds a theory of trust based on informal contract enforcement in social networks. In our model, network connections between individuals can be used as social collateral to secure informal borrowing. We define network-based trust as the largest amount one agent can borrow from another agent and derive a reduced-form expression for this quantity, which we then use in three applications. (1) We predict that dense networks generate bondi…
Why Beauty Matters
We decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where “employers” determine wages of “workers” who perform a maze-solving task. This task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness. We find a sizable beauty premium and can identify three transmission channels: (a) physically attractive workers are more confident and higher confidence increases wages; (b) for a given level of confidence, physica…
Comparing Estimates of News Consumption from Survey and Passively Collected Behavioral Data
Surveys are a vital tool for understanding public opinion and knowledge, but they can also yield biased estimates of behavior. Here we explore a popular and important behavior that is frequently measured in public opinion surveys: news consumption. Previous studies have shown that television news consumption is consistently overreported in surveys relative to passively collected behavioral data. We validate these earlier findings, showing that th…
Do Celebrity Endorsements Matter? A Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination in Indonesia
Do celebrity endorsements matter? And if so, how can celebrities communicate effectively? We conduct a nationwide Twitter experiment in Indonesia promoting vaccination. Celebrity messages are 72% more likely to be passed on or liked than similar messages without a celebrity’s imprimatur. In total, 66% of the celebrity effect comes from authorship, compared to passing on messages. Citing external medical sources decreases retweets by 27%. Phone su…
Naïve Learning with Uninformed Agents
The DeGroot model has emerged as a credible alternative to the standard Bayesian model for studying learning on networks, offering a natural way to model naïve learning in a complex setting. One unattractive aspect of this model is the assumption that the process starts with every node in the network having a signal. We study a natural extension of the DeGroot model that can deal with sparse initial signals. We show that an agent’s social influen…
Why Beauty Matters
We decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where “employers” determine wages of “workers” who perform a maze-solving task. This task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness. We find a sizable beauty premium and can identify three transmission channels: (a) physically attractive workers are more confident and higher confidence increases wages; (b) for a given level of confidence, physica…
Directed Altruism and Enforced Reciprocity in Social Networks
We conducted online field experiments in large real-world social networks in order to decompose prosocial giving into three components: (1) baseline altruism toward randomly selected strangers, (2) directed altruism that favors friends over random strangers, and (3) giving motivated by the prospect of future interaction. Directed altruism increases giving to friends by 52% relative to random strangers, whereas future interaction effects increase …
Trust and Social Collateral
This paper builds a theory of trust based on informal contract enforcement in social networks. In our model, network connections between individuals can be used as social collateral to secure informal borrowing. We define network-based trust as the largest amount one agent can borrow from another agent and derive a reduced-form expression for this quantity, which we then use in three applications. (1) We predict that dense networks generate bondi…
Naïve Learning with Uninformed Agents
The DeGroot model has emerged as a credible alternative to the standard Bayesian model for studying learning on networks, offering a natural way to model naïve learning in a complex setting. One unattractive aspect of this model is the assumption that the process starts with every node in the network having a signal. We study a natural extension of the DeGroot model that can deal with sparse initial signals. We show that an agent’s social influen…
Comparing Estimates of News Consumption from Survey and Passively Collected Behavioral Data
Surveys are a vital tool for understanding public opinion and knowledge, but they can also yield biased estimates of behavior. Here we explore a popular and important behavior that is frequently measured in public opinion surveys: news consumption. Previous studies have shown that television news consumption is consistently overreported in surveys relative to passively collected behavioral data. We validate these earlier findings, showing that th…
Do Celebrity Endorsements Matter? A Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination in Indonesia
Do celebrity endorsements matter? And if so, how can celebrities communicate effectively? We conduct a nationwide Twitter experiment in Indonesia promoting vaccination. Celebrity messages are 72% more likely to be passed on or liked than similar messages without a celebrity’s imprimatur. In total, 66% of the celebrity effect comes from authorship, compared to passing on messages. Citing external medical sources decreases retweets by 27%. Phone su…
Psychology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Economics (3 works) · Microeconomics (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works) · Advertising (2 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (2 works) · Media Influence and Politics (2 works)