Many social networks have the following properties: (i) a short average distance between any two individuals; (ii) a high clustering coefficient; (iii) segregation patterns; the presence of (iv) brokers and (v) hubs. (i) and (ii) define a small world network. This paper develops a strategic network formation model where agents have heterogeneous knowledge of the network: cognizant agents know the whole network, while ignorant ones are less knowledgeable. For a broad range of parameters, all pairwise Nash (PN) networks have properties (i)-(iv). There are some PN networks with one hub. Cognizant agents have higher betweenness centrality: they are the brokers who connect different parts of the network. Ignorant agents cause the emergence of segregation patterns. The results are robust to varying the number of cognizant agents and to increasing the knowledge level of ignorant ones. An application shows the relevance of the results to assessing the welfare impact of an increase in network knowledge due to, e.g., improved access to social networking tools.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei in its series Working Papers with number
2009.34.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Did you know? Each page is provided with a technical contact, in case something is not right with the supplied information. See under "publisher info".