Economics: An Emerging Small World?

Sanjeev Goyal, Marco van der Leij and Jose Moraga-Gonzalez

No 2004.84, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: The structures of social interaction affect individual behavior and economic performance in important ways. This leads us to ask: does the architecture of social interaction exhibit particular patterns and are these patterns stable over time? We examine interaction among economists by looking at the evolution of co-authorship relations over a thirty year period. We find that in the 1970's this world was quite fragmented with the largest interconnected group { the giant component { covering only 15% of the population. However, by the 1990's economics was much more integrated, with the giant component covering over 40% of the population. The average distance between individuals was small and declined over the period, leading us to conclude that economics is an emerging small world. A crucial stable feature of the network over this period is the existence of several stars (economists with many co-authors each of whom have few collaborators and rarely work among themselves). The world of economics is thus a collection of inter-linked stars. We also find that a growth in the average number of co-authors is the main reason behind the growth in the giant component and the fall in average distances within it. The second part of the paper develops a simple theoretical model of collaboration in economics. We find that an unequal distribution of collaborations and inter- linked stars arise naturally in this environment. Falling costs of communication and increasing credit for joint research lead to greater co-authorship and this supports a larger giant component.

Keywords: Small worlds; Networks; Global village (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 C7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/w ... oads/NDL2004-084.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Economics: An Emerging Small World (2006)
Working Paper: Economics: An Emerging Small World? (2004)
Working Paper: Economics: An Emerging Small World? (2004)
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:fem:femwpa:2004.84

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alberto Prina Cerai ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).