We examine a simple economic model of network formation where agents benefit from indirect relationships. We show that small-world features-short path lengths between nodes together with highly clustered link structures-necessarily emerge for a wide set of parameters. (JEL: D85, A14, C72)...

We model network formation when heterogeneous nodes enter sequentially and form connections through both random meetings and network-based search, but with type-dependent biases. We show that there is “long-run integration”, whereby the composition of types in sufficiently old nodesʼ...

We present a dynamic model of network formation where nodes find other nodes with whom to form links in two ways: some are found uniformly at random, while others are found by searching locally through the current structure of the network (e.g., meeting friends of friends). This combination of...

How should we make value judgments about wealth inequality? Harsanyi (1953) proposes to take an individual who evaluates her well-being by expected utility and ask her to evaluate the wealth possibilities ex-ante (i.e. before she finds her place in society, i.e., under the "veil of ignorance" of...

'The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks' represents the frontier of research into how and why networks they form, how they influence behavior, how they help govern outcomes in an interactive world, and how they shape collective decision making, opinion formation, and diffusion...