Cities and the Structure of Social Interactions: Evidence from Mobile Phone Data

Konstantin Büchel and Maximilian von Ehrlich
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Konstantin Büchel: University of Bern and CRED

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Social interactions are considered pivotal to agglomeration economies. We explore a unique dataset on mobile phone calls to examine how distance and population density shape the structure of social interactions. Exploiting an exogenous change in travel times, we find that distance is highly detrimental to interpersonal exchange. We show that, despite distance-related costs, urban residents do not benefit from larger networks when spatial sorting is accounted for. Higher density rather generates a more efficient network in terms of matching and clustering. These differences in network structure capitalize into land prices, corroborating the hypothesis that agglomeration economies operate via network efficiency.

Keywords: Economic Geography; Agglomeration Economies; Social Interactions; Network Analysis; Spatial Sorting JEL Classification: R10; R23; D83; D85; Z13. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-net, nep-pay, nep-soc and nep-ure
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... 356-2018_ehrlich.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Cities and the structure of social interactions: Evidence from mobile phone data (2020)
Working Paper: Cities and the Structure of Social Interactions: Evidence from Mobile Phone Data (2017)
Working Paper: Cities and the Structure of Social Interactions: Evidence from Mobile Phone Data (2016)
Working Paper: Cities and the Structure of Social Interactions: Evidence from Mobile Phone Data (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:356

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