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  5. Friendship Networks and Political Opinions

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Friendship Networks and Political Opinions

  • Yann Algan
  • Nicolò Dalvit
  • Quoc-Anh Do
  • Alexis Le Chapelain
  • Yves Zenou
American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We examine how social interactions and friendships shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, a leading French university specializing in social and political sciences. The quasi-random assignment of students into short-term integration groups before their academic curriculum reduces political opinion gaps and fosters friendship formation. Using same-group membership as an instrumental variable for friendship, we find that friendship reduces opinion differences by 40% of a standard deviation in the opinion gap. Our evidence supports a homophily-enforced mechanism: friendships form among initially politically similar students, leading them to join political associations together, reinforcing their similarity.

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