Adoption as a Social Marker: Innovation Diffusion with Outgroup Aversion

Social identities are among the key factors driving behavior in complex societies. Signals of social identity are known to influence individual behaviors in the adoption of innovations. Yet the population-level consequences of identity signaling on the diffusion of innovations are largely unknown. Here we use both analytical and agent-based modeling to consider the spread of a beneficial innovation in a structured population in which there exist two groups who are averse to being mistaken for each other. We investigate the dynamics of adoption and consider the role of structural factors such as demographic skew and communication scale on population-level outcomes. We find that outgroup aversion can lead to adoption being delayed or suppressed in one group, and that population-wide underadoption is common. Comparing the two models, we find that differential adoption can arise due to structural constraints on information flow even in the absence of intrinsic between-group differences in adoption rates. Further, we find that patterns of polarization in adoption at both local and global scales depend on the details of demographic organization and the scale of communication. This research has particular relevance to widely beneficial but identity-relevant products and behaviors, such as green technologies, where overall levels of adoption determine the positive benefits that accrue to society at large.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure

Federalism as a Public Good

This paper suggests that stabilizing federalism is like solving a public good provision problem. It reviews results in the public good provision literature that are relevant for federalism, and discusses the implications of these results for the institutional design of federalism.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44798/1/10602_2005_Article_2235.pd

Prosociality, Federalism, and Cultural Evolution

Constitutions are more than their text; a constitution is also a set of conventions, or expectations that constituents have about one another's behavior.  That is, constitutions have a culture. The coherence between the constitutional law and constitutional culture determine a constitution's success.  Constitutional culture and constitutional law co-evolve; by understanding the influence of multiple institutions, one may make predictions about the likelihood of the emergence of a prosocial constitutional culture.  There are reasons to believe that federalism might encourage the development of a prosocial constitutional culture, but the effect is far from certain.This essay concludes with questions to consider in while assessing Afghanistan's prospects for constitutional success