The important role of friends, neighbors and colleagues in shaping individual choices has been brought out in a number of studies over the years. The presence of significant ‘local’ influence in shaping individual behavior suggests that firms, governments and developmental agencies should...

We consider a non-cooperative model of information networks where communication is costly and not fully reliable. We examine the nature of Nash networks and efficient networks. <p>We find that if the society is large, and link formation costs are moderate, Nash networks as well as efficient...</p>

We study a setting in which individual players choose their partners as well as a mode of behavior in 2×2 anti-coordination games – games where a player’s best response is to choose an action unlike that of her partner. We characterize the equilibrium networks as well as study the effects...

We study how knowledge about the social network of an individual researcher, as embodied in his coauthor relations, helps us in developing a more accurate prediction of his or her future productivity. We find that incorporating information about coauthor networks leads to a modest improvement in...

This discussion paper has resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://aa4pq3kw5l.search.serialssolutions.com/directLink?&atitle=Economics%3A%20An%20Emerging%20Small%20World&author=Sanjeev%20Goyal%3B%20Marco%20J%20van%20der%20Leij%3B%20José%20Luis%20Moraga%2DGonzález&issn=00223808&title=The%20Journal%20of%20Political%20Economy&volume=114&issue=2&date=20060401&spage=403&id=doi:&sid=ProQ_ss&genre=article&lang=en">'Journal of Political Economy'</A>.<P>This paper examines the small world hypothesis. The first part of the paper presents empirical evidence on the evolution of a particular world: the world of journal publishing economists during the period...</p></a>

In many economic and social contexts, individual players choose their partners and also decide ona mode of behavior in interactions with these partners. This paper develops a simple model toexamine the interaction between partner choice and individual behavior in games of coordination.An...

This paper studies network formation in settings where players are heterogeneous with respect to benefits as well as the costs of forming links. Our results demonstrate that centrality, center-sponsorship and short network diameter are robust features of equilibrium networks. We find that in a...