Economic uncertainty spillover and social networks

This research investigates the impact of social networks on developing economic uncertainty spillover networks. The study constructs an inter-provincial Chinese economic uncertainty spillover network using a high dimesion dataset and assembles the provincial social network using microblog data. Furthermore, the exponential random graph model is used to analyze the impact of social networks. The findings indicate that the social network significantly hinders the formation of an economic uncertainty spillover network, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, the impact of social networks is found to be more statistically significant than that of population and other attributes. While most existing research has focused on the influence of social networks from a microeconomic perspective, this study contributes to the literature by uncovering a robust negative relationship between social networks and economic uncertainty spillover networks, particularly curbing the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.