This paper deals with the role of reciprocation in the formation of individuals' social networks. We follow the activity of a panel of bloggers over more than a year and investigate the extent to which initiating a relation brings about its reciprocation. We adapt a standard capital investment...

The objective of this paper is to theoretically analyze how human interaction may evolve in a world characterized by the explosion of online networking and other Web-mediated ways of building and nurturing relationships. The analysis shows that online networking yields a storage mechanism...

This paper investigates the determinants of co-inventor tie formation using micro-data on genomic patents from 1990 to 2006 in France. In a single analysis, we consider the relational and proximity perspectives that are usually treated separately. In order to do so, we analyse various forms of...

This paper develops a model of noncooperative network formation. Link formation is two-sided. Information flow is two-way. The paper is based on Bala and Goyal (2000) with the following difference in assumption: the value of information decays as it flows through each agent, and the decay is...

A substantial number of studies have extended the work on universal properties in physical systems to complex networks in social, biological, and technological systems. In this paper, we present a complex networks perspective on interfirm organizational networks by mapping, analyzing and...

This paper investigates the determinants of co-inventor tie formation using micro-data on genomic patents from 1990 to 2006 in France. We consider in a single analysis the relational and proximity perspectives that are usually treated separately. In order to do so, we analyse the determinants of...

This paper proposes an evolutionary framework to explore the dynamics of social interaction in an environment characterized by online networking and increasing pressure on time. The model shows how time pressure encourages the choice to develop social interactions also through online networking...

We add to the literature by conducting the first empirical assessment of how online networking affects two economically relevant aspects of social capital, i.e. trust and sociability, in a large and representative sample. We address endogeneity in online networking by exploiting technological...

Does Facebook make people lonely and unhappy? Empirical studies have produced conflicting results about the effect of social networking sites (SNS) use on individual welfare. We use a representative sample of the Italian population to investigate how actual and virtual networks of social...

In this study, we develop an evolutionary game model to analyse how human relations evolve in a context characterised by declining face-to-face interactions and growing online social participation. Our results suggest that online networks may constitute a coping response allowing individuals to...