We study social learning in a social network setting where agents receive independent noisy signals about the truth. Agents naïvely update beliefs by repeatedly taking weighted averages of neighbors' opinions. The weights are fixed in the sense of representing average frequency and intensity of...

This paper proposes a simple social network model of occupational segregation, generated by the existence of inbreeding bias among individuals of the same social group. If network referrals are important in getting a job, then expected inbreeding bias in the social structure results in different...

Empirical studies of labor markets show that social contacts are an important source of job-related information [Ioannides and Loury (2004)]. At the same time, wage differences among workers may be explained only in part by differences in individual background characteristics. Such findings...

This paper highlights the ‘magic of diasporas’ - as a source of progress in a globalizing world - with special attention for migrant (or ethnic) entrepreneurship. The present study aims to identify and examine the critical critical success factors of migrant enterprises and their...

This paper proposes a new measure for a group's ability to lead society to adopt their standard of behavior, which in particular takes account of the time the group takes to convince the whole society to adopt their position. This notion of a group's power to initiate action is computed as the...

Cities have become playing grounds for competitive behaviour and rapid economic dynamics. But in many cities (or urban agglomerations) economic growth is mainly manifested in specific geographic areas, where creative people and innovative entrepreneurs are located. This paper offers first the...

This paper analyzes the relationship between unexplained racial/ethnic wage differentials on the one hand and social network segregation, as measured by inbreeding homophily, on the other hand. Our analysis is based on both U.S. and Estonian surveys, supplemented with Estonian telephone...

The novelty of our model is to combine models of collective action on networks with models of social learning. Agents are connected according to an undirected graph, the social network, and have the choice between two actions: either to adopt a new behavior or technology or stay with the default...

We study the impact of bots on social learning in a social network setting. Regular agents receive independent noisy signals about the true value of a variable and then communicate in a network. They na¨?vely update beliefs by repeatedly taking weighted averages of neighbors' opinions. Bots are...

In this paper, we develop a model that can explain why governments may want to choose to offer a voluntary disclosure program that allows people who withheld taxes to turn themselves in without punishment. We find that such a leniency rule not only increases government revenue when it comes as a...