“Istituzioni di Economia Politica. Volume Secondo. Macroeconomia” (2006), Torino: Giappichelli.

“Istituzioni di Economia Politica. Volume Primo. Microeconomia”

Job contact networks, inequality and aggregate output

In this paper we study the effects of social networks on wage inequality and aggregate production. In particular, we consider a simplified version of the model by Calvo'-Armengol and Jackson (2003), with good and bad jobs and skilled and unskilled workers. Our findings are: i) increasing the number of social links increases aggregate output and may reduce inequality; ii) given a number of social connections, output increases if the average distance among worker decreases; iii) a more mixed and well-integrated society, that is a society in which heterogeneous workers share social links, produces more output and less inequality than a society in which some workers are isolated, when productiv…

A Note on Symmetry in Job Contact Networks

Since the seminal work of Granovetter (1995), the sociological literature highlighted the importance of social relationships, like friends, relatives and acquaintances, as sources of information on jobs in labor markets. Such importance is also confirmed by a number of empirical studies.3 More recently, economists have devoted considerable attention to this topic,4 so that the study of individual and aggregate economic outcomes produced by the presence of social relationships in labor markets is becoming a fruitful research area in economics.