In order to face the new competitive scenario, Apulian textile firms are involved in a process of change and are trying to adopt a networking approach in analysing the international propensity of SMEs. The case of the textile network in Apulia has been analysed using a semi-structured...

I develop a model of the financial sector in which endogenous intermediation among debt financed banks generates excessive systemic risk. Financial institutions have incentives to capture intermediation spreads through strategic borrowing and lending decisions. By doing so, they tilt the...

We examine friendships and study partnerships among university students over several years. At the aggregate level, connections increase over time, but homophily on gender and ethnicity is relatively constant across time, university residences, and different network layers. At the individual...

Social interactions determine many economic behaviors, but information on social ties does not exist in most publicly available and widely used datasets. We present results on the identification of social networks from observational panel data that contains no information on social ties between...

This paper was written as an editorial preface to a "Symposium on Relational Contracts", that was jointly edited by the three authors, and that will appear in the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE). The Symposium contains eleven contributions to the economics of relational...

Does higher office always lead to more favoritism? We argue that firms may lose their benefit from a connected politicians ascent to higher office, if it entails stricter scrutiny that may reduce favoritism. Around close Congress elections, we find RDD-based evidence of this adverse effect that...

Social interactions determine many economic behaviors, but information on social ties does not exist in most publicly available and widely used datasets. We present results on the identification of social networks from observational panel data that contains no information on social ties between...

A vast and growing quantitative literature considers how social networks shape political mobilization but the degree to which turnout decisions are strategic remains ambiguous. Unlike previous studies, we establish personal links between voters and candidates and exploit discontinuous incentives...