Geography and social links shape economic interactions. In industries, schools, and markets, the entire network determines outcomes. This paper analyzes a large class of games and obtains a striking result. Equilibria depend on a single network measure: the lowest eigenvalue. This paper is the first to uncover the importance of the lowest eigenvalue to economic and social outcomes. It captures how much the network amplifies agents' actions. The paper combines new tools—potential games, optimization, and spectral graph theory—to solve for all Nash and stable equilibria and applies the results to R&D, crime, and the econometrics of peer effects.

Target setting by superiors and their discretion in compensation decisions are important interrelated pieces in an organization's control system. Thus, we examine how these processes influence each other and superiors' decisions therein. We predict, and experimentally find, superiors with ex post compensation discretion set more difficult targets and put less effort into the target-setting process. This suggests that providing ex post compensation discretion fundamentally changes the ex ante target-setting process. We further analyze how superiors use their discretion and find superiors who set targets knowing they can make ex post compensation adjustments are more likely to make both positive and negative adjustments to subordinate compensation compared to those who set targets without the benefit of ex post discretion, whereas past research findings suggest that superiors are reluctant to make negative adjustments to compensation. Thus, our study illustrates that target setting and compensation discretion influence each other to affect superiors' decisions concerning subordinates, providing insight into the use of these processes in management control systems.

There are growing calls to restrict advertising of junk foods. Whether such a move will improve diet quality will depend on how advertising shifts consumer demands and how firms respond. We study an important and typical junk food market-the potato chips market. We exploit consumer level exposure to adverts to estimate demand, allowing advertising to potentially shift the weight consumers place on product healthiness, tilt demand curves, have dynamic effects and spillover effects across brands. We simulate the impact of a ban and show that the potential health benefits are partially offset by firms lowering prices and by consumer switching to other junk foods.

Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption. We assess who is most impacted by soda taxes. We estimate demand using micro longitudinal data covering on-the-go purchases, and exploit the panel dimension to estimate individual-specific preferences. We relate these preferences and counterfactual predictions to individual characteristics and show that soda taxes are relatively effective at targeting the sugar intake of the young, are less successful at targeting the intake of those with high total dietary sugar, and are unlikely to be strongly regressive especially if consumers benefit from averted internalities.