A simple model of homophily in social networks |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Economics, University of Leicester, England;2. Universita׳ Ca׳ Foscari di Venezia, Italy;3. New Economic School, Moscow, Russia;4. Bocconi University, Italy;5. IGIER, Italy;1. School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States;2. Department of Economics, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom;1. ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium;2. CEPR, United States;3. CESifo, Germany;4. Department of Economics, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy;5. FNRS, Belgium;6. CEREC, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium;7. CORE, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium;1. Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis, United States;2. Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Caltech, United States;1. Department of Management and Microeconomics, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 4, D-60323 Frankfurt/Main, Germany;2. Leuphana University Lüneburg, Institute of Economics, Scharnhorststr. 1, D-21335 Lüneburg, Germany;1. Department of Sociology/ICS, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands;2. ERCOMER (European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations)/ICS, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands;3. Department of Sociology, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands;4. Department of Sociology & Social Work, King Abdul Aziz University, Abdullah Suleiman Street, Al Jamiaa District 80200, Saudi Arabia;1. Department of Sociology, University of Alabama-Birmingham, Heritage Hall Building, 1401 University Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35294-1152, United States;2. Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, Canada;3. Department of Sociology and Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States |
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| Abstract: | Biases in meeting opportunities have been recently shown to play a key role for the emergence of homophily in social networks (see Currarini et al., 2009). The aim of this paper is to provide a simple microfoundation of these biases in a model where the size and type-composition of the meeting pools are shaped by agents׳ socialization decisions. In particular, agents either inbreed (direct search only to similar types) or outbreed (direct search to population at large). When outbreeding is costly, this is shown to induce stark equilibrium behavior of a threshold type: agents “inbreed” (i.e. mostly meet their own type) if, and only if, their group is above certain size. We show that this threshold equilibrium generates patterns of in-group and cross-group ties that are consistent with empirical evidence of homophily in two paradigmatic instances: high school friendships and interethnic marriages. |
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| Keywords: | Homophily Social networks Segregation |
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