(Revised July 28, 2025)
We study how network structure and peer influence shape cultural change by tracking writing styles in economic theory from 1970 to 2019. We estimate a discrete-choice model where individual preferences, peer effects, and co-author bargaining drive gendered pronoun choice, leveraging variation in each author’s feasible co-author network as a source of exclusion restrictions. Estimation reveals a profession of conformists with strong peer influence: when an author’s peers shift from 20 percent to 70 percent feminine-only pronoun use, the author’s odds of adopting the feminine form more than double. Counterfactual simulations show that absent external societal trends, the early masculine norm would have persisted; however, once those pressures appeared, peer influence magnified their impact boosting long-run stylistic diversity. We also find that homophily in co-authorship sustained writing style diversity by allowing minority preferences to express freely. Demographic shifts — entry of women and new cohorts — did not initiate cultural change but accelerated it once under way by amplifying peer effects. Cultural change depended less on demographic turnover than on how newcomers rewired the network structure, turning peer influence from an initial drag into the engine of norm evolution.