Structural holes and densely connected communities

It has been empirically shown that structural holes in social networks enable potential large benefits to those individuals who bridge them (Burt, 2004). The pioneering paper Goyal and Vega-Redondo (2007) offers a new incentives based explanation of this phenomenon. But the main equilibrium network of their model does not display a basic empirical regularity: the architecture of social networks is characterized by the existence of densely linked communities loosely connected to one another (Granovetter, 1983). This paper analyzes the conditions under which agents who benefit from bridging structural holes can be sustained in equilibrium networks constituted by densely linked groups.