One definition of social capital is the "networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". This definition of social capital highlights two key features. First, it refers to connections between people, shifting our...

We measure the impact of labor market referral networks defined by residential neighborhoods on re-employment following mass layoffs. Because networks can only be effective when hiring is occurring, we focus on a measure of the strength of the labor market network that includes not only the...

We specify and implement a test for the importance of network effects in determining the establishments at which people work, using recently-constructed matched employer-employee data at the establishment level. We explicitly measure the importance of network effects for groups broken out by...