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 develops a search model with heterogeneous workers and social networks. High ability workers are more productive and have a larger number of professional contacts. Firms have a choice between a high cost vacancy in the regular labour market and a low cost job opening in the referral...

Measuring ego-centered networks is an especially time-expensive endeavor. However, to be included in multi-thematic surveys, parsimony is needed instead of following a maximizing strategy. Therefore, one pressing questions is, whether and which type of parsimonious data collection produces what...

The aim of the report is the analysis of mechanisms behind labour migrants' social network formation and the role of networks in the process of everyday integration, understood as interaction in vital areas of people's lives, such as work, education or free time. The analysis is based on data...

We study the influence of social networks on labor market transitions. We develop the first model where social ties and job status coevolve through time. Our key assumption is that the probability of formation of a new tie is greater between two employed individuals than between an employed and...

Social capital is an asset for individuals because it grants access to important resources embedded in their social networks. But social capital is not evenly distributed among different groups. Gender groups are analysed in this paper in order to examine if there are differences in diverse...

Der Beitrag widmet sich den Sozialstrukturen und sozialen Beziehungen in Kleinstädten: Es werden die zentralen Begrifflichkeiten geklärt, ein Überblick über den bisherigen Forschungsstand gegeben sowie offene Fragen für die Kleinstadtforschung benannt. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, dass...

The paper provides the impact of social capital on the cost of debt of rural household businesses in Vietnam by using the panel data sample of 4,874 household businesses. Social capital is considered as the connections with people in the society including connections with people in the same...

In this paper we explore the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and social capital. First, we test for time differences in the impact of ethnic fractionalization on social capital using U.S. data from 1990, 1997 and 2005. Subsequently we examine the data for evidence of the conflict,...

This paper analyzes an early modern German economy to test alternative theories about guilds. It finds little evidence to support recent hypotheses arguing that guilds corrected market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. But it finds that guilds were social networks...