This paper examines the small world hypothesis. The first part of the paper presents empirical evidence on the evolution of a particular world: the world of journal publishing economists during the period 1970-2000. We find that in the 1970's the world of economics was a collection of islands....

The structures of social interaction affect individual behavior and economic performance in important ways. This leads us to ask: does the architecture of social interaction exhibit particular patterns and are these patterns stable over time? We examine interaction among economists by looking at...

This discussion paper has resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://aa4pq3kw5l.search.serialssolutions.com/directLink?&atitle=Economics%3A%20An%20Emerging%20Small%20World&author=Sanjeev%20Goyal%3B%20Marco%20J%20van%20der%20Leij%3B%20José%20Luis%20Moraga%2DGonzález&issn=00223808&title=The%20Journal%20of%20Political%20Economy&volume=114&issue=2&date=20060401&spage=403&id=doi:&sid=ProQ_ss&genre=article&lang=en">'Journal of Political Economy'</A>.<P>This paper examines the small world hypothesis. The first part of the paper presents empirical evidence on the evolution of a particular world: the world of journal publishing economists during the period...</p></a>

When there are competing technologies or products with unknown payoffs which are adopted over time within a society, an important question is whether conformism or diversity will prevail. We use a learning model with local interactions to study this question. We show that the structure of...