The Impact of Social Networks on Labour Market Outcomes: New Evidence from Cape Breton

Adnan Q. Khan and Steven Lehrer ()

CLSSRN working papers from Vancouver School of Economics

Abstract: Debates centered on the role of social networks as a determinant of labour market outcomes have a long history in economics and sociology; however, determining causality remains a challenge. In this study we use information on random assignment to a unique intervention to identify the impact of changes in the size of alternative social network measures on subsequent employment at both the individual and community level. Our results indicate that being assigned to the treatment protocol significantly increased the size of social networks, particularly weak ties. Nevertheless, these increases did not translate into improved employment outcomes 18 months following study completion. We do not find any evidence of treatment effect heterogeneity based on the initial size of one’s social network; but those whose strong ties increased at a higher rate during the experiment were significantly less likely to hold a job following the experiment. We find that many of these results also hold at the community level among those who did not directly participate in the intervention. In summary, our results suggest that policies can successfully influence the size of an individual’s social network, but these increases have limited impacts on long run labour market outcomes with the notable exception of changes in the composition of individuals who hold jobs.

Keywords: employment; social networks; experiment; non-compliance; Maritimes; strong and weak ties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D85 J48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2013-02-25, Revised 2013-02-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/CLSRN%2 ... n%20and%20Lehrer.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Social Networks on Labour Market Outcomes: New Evidence from Cape Breton (2013)
Working Paper: The Impact of Social Networks on Labour Market Outcomes: New Evidence from Cape Breton (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2013-7

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CLSSRN working papers from Vancouver School of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vivian Tran ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).