A Sensitivity Framework for Identifying Contagion under Latent Homophily for Fixed-in-Time Network Analyses, with an Application to U.S. House Congressional Vot... (opens in new tab)

Whether connected units are similar because influence spreads across ties or because similar units form ties, is a long-standing problem. Contagion or influence is generically unidentified from observational network data. We consider the minimal and common setting of a single network, fixed over time, with two waves of a binary nodal outcome. Rather than positing a parametric model for network formation, we reframe identification of contagion as...