We study the existence of homophily (i.e. the tendency for people to make friends with people who are similar to themselves) with respect to trustworthiness. We ask whether two friends show similarly trustworthy behavior towards strangers, and whether this is anticipated by outsiders. We develop...

We investigate the role of manipulation in a model of opinion formation. Agents repeatedly communicate with their neighbors in the social network, can exert effort to manipulate the trust of others, and update their opinions about some common issue by taking weighted averages of neighbors'...

Community enforcement is an important device for sustaining efficiency in some repeated games of cooperation. We investigate cooperation when information about players' reputations spreads to their future partners through links in a social network that connects them. We find that information...

We study the existence of homophily (i.e. the tendency for people to make friends with people who are similar to themselves) with respect to trustworthiness. We ask whether two friends show similarly trustworthy behavior towards strangers, and whether this is anticipated by outsiders. We develop...

We investigate the role of manipulation in a model of opinion formation. Agents repeatedly communicate with their neighbors in the social network, can exert effort to manipulate the trust of others, and update their opinions about some common issue by taking weighted averages of neighbors'...

This paper studies the importance of social interactions for the adoption of financial services among young adults. Specifically, we investigate whether, how, and why financial decisions among interacting agents are correlated. We exploit a unique dataset of friendship networks in the United...

Using the 2011 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) database, we explore the heterogeneous impacts of social networks on informal financial inclusion for urban and rural households in the People's Republic of China. We find that social networks significantly increase the probability of...

Using new data on 590 Turkish households in Berlin, we investigate the determinants and impact of integration on economic performance. We find that the usual suspects, such as time spent in Germany and education, have positive impact, while networks have no impact on integration. There is strong...

We explore the relationship between connections and public transfers in decentralized poverty-targeting programmes. Using panel data from Vietnam we find evidence that households with connections to local government are more likely to be classified as poor, the main determinant of whether...