Dean Eckles

Interdependence and the cost of uncoordinated responses to COVID-19. Forthcoming in PNAS.

Using mobility data from millions of phones tracked by Safegraph and Facebook, we study spillovers of local and state non-pharmaceutical interventions to prevent COVID-19 spread. Mobility behaviors in one place are substantially influenced by the policies and behaviors of people in other, sometimes distant, regions. Our theoretical model shows how this results in a substantial “loss from anarchy”.

Estimating peer effects in networks with peer encouragement designs. PNAS.

We employ a novel experimental design to modulate how many likes and comments are received by 49 million Facebook users, allowing us to estimate network effects in adoption and use of communication technologies.