We develop a model where information about jobs is essentially obtained through friends and relatives, i.e. strong and weak ties. Workers commute to a business center to work and to interact with other people. We find that housing prices increase with the level of social interactions in the city...

We develop a model in which non-white individuals are defined with respect to their social environment (family, friends, neighbors) and their attachments to their culture of origin (religion, language), and in which jobs are mainly found through social networks. We find that, depending on how...

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the size and the quality of social networks on the probability to find a job. We first develop a theoretical model in which individuals are embedded within a network of social relationships. Workers can obtain information about jobs via employed...

Who becomes a top politician in China? We focus on provincial leaders a pool of candidates for top political office and examine how their chances of promotion depend on their performance in office and connections with top politicians. Our empirical analysis, based on the curriculum vitae of...

This paper takes a step towards formalizing the theoretical interconnections among four post-Indutrial Revolution phenomena - the industrialization and growth take-off of rich 'northern' nations, massive global income divergence, and rapid trade expansion. Specifically, we present a...

This note elaborates an extension of the paper "Social Norms, the Welfare State, and Voting" by Lindbeck, Nyberg and Weibull. That paper studies the effects of a social norm against living off others work. In the welfare-state context of their model, this means that individuals who live on...

This note elaborates an extension of the paper "Social Norms, the Welfare State, and Voting" by Lindbeck, Nyberg, and Weibull [1]. That paper studies the effects of a social norm against living off others work. In the welfare-state context of their model, this means that individuals who live on...