IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v389y2010i21p4913-4917.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scale-free human migration and the geography of social networks

Author

Listed:
  • Levy, Moshe

Abstract

The “gravitational law of social interaction”, by which the probability of a social link decreases inversely with the square of the geographic distance, has been recently documented. The source of this spatial property of social networks, however, is yet unknown. The formation of social links is related to human dynamics both on the day-to-day, typically small scale, level of mobility, and on larger scale migration (or reallocation) movements. In this study we analyze human migration patterns by investigating the migration of 46.8 million individuals across the US during 1995–2000. We find that the probability of migration decreases as a power law of the distance, with exponent −1. We show that this finding offers an explanation for the gravitational law of social interaction. Possible explanations and implications of the scale-free migration pattern are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Levy, Moshe, 2010. "Scale-free human migration and the geography of social networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(21), pages 4913-4917.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:21:p:4913-4917
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2010.07.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437110006187
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2010.07.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Réka Albert & Hawoong Jeong & Albert-László Barabási, 1999. "Diameter of the World-Wide Web," Nature, Nature, vol. 401(6749), pages 130-131, September.
    2. Lambiotte, Renaud & Blondel, Vincent D. & de Kerchove, Cristobald & Huens, Etienne & Prieur, Christophe & Smoreda, Zbigniew & Van Dooren, Paul, 2008. "Geographical dispersal of mobile communication networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(21), pages 5317-5325.
    3. George Sugihara & Hao Ye, 2009. "Cooperative network dynamics," Nature, Nature, vol. 458(7241), pages 979-980, April.
    4. Harrison Hong & Jeffrey D. Kubik & Jeremy C. Stein, 2005. "Thy Neighbor's Portfolio: Word‐of‐Mouth Effects in the Holdings and Trades of Money Managers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2801-2824, December.
    5. D. Brockmann & L. Hufnagel & T. Geisel, 2006. "The scaling laws of human travel," Nature, Nature, vol. 439(7075), pages 462-465, January.
    6. Schwartz, Aba, 1973. "Interpreting the Effect of Distance on Migration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(5), pages 1153-1169, Sept.-Oct.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ionel MUNTELE & Raluca-Ioana HOREA-ȘERBAN, 2021. "From Internal to International Migration in Romania – Continuity and Spatial Differentiation," Eastern European Journal for Regional Studies (EEJRS), Center for Studies in European Integration (CSEI), Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova (ASEM), vol. 7(2), pages 5-26, December.
    2. Benoît Schmutz & Modibo Sidibé, 2019. "Frictional Labour Mobility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(4), pages 1779-1826.
    3. Jincheng Jiang & Jinsong Chen & Wei Tu & Chisheng Wang, 2019. "A Novel Effective Indicator of Weighted Inter-City Human Mobility Networks to Estimate Economic Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Laszlo Gadar & Zsolt T. Kosztyan & Janos Abonyi, 2018. "The Settlement Structure Is Reflected in Personal Investments: Distance-Dependent Network Modularity-Based Measurement of Regional Attractiveness," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2018, pages 1-16, December.
    5. Lin, Jingyi, 2012. "Network analysis of China’s aviation system, statistical and spatial structure," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 109-117.
    6. Xavier Gabaix, 2016. "Power Laws in Economics: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 185-206, Winter.
    7. Csáji, Balázs Cs. & Browet, Arnaud & Traag, V.A. & Delvenne, Jean-Charles & Huens, Etienne & Van Dooren, Paul & Smoreda, Zbigniew & Blondel, Vincent D., 2013. "Exploring the mobility of mobile phone users," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(6), pages 1459-1473.
    8. Aksoy, Ozan & Yıldırım, Sinan, 2020. "A model of dynamic migration networks: Explaining Turkey's inter-provincial migration flows," SocArXiv rf724, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meysam Alizadeh & Claudio Cioffi-Revilla & Andrew Crooks, 2017. "Generating and analyzing spatial social networks," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 362-390, September.
    2. Przemyslaw A Grabowicz & José J Ramasco & Bruno Gonçalves & Víctor M Eguíluz, 2014. "Entangling Mobility and Interactions in Social Media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, March.
    3. Levy, Moshe & Goldenberg, Jacob, 2014. "The gravitational law of social interaction," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 393(C), pages 418-426.
    4. Tobias Scholl & Antonios Garas & Frank Schweitzer, 2015. "The spatial component of R&D networks," Papers 1509.08291, arXiv.org.
    5. Wu, Jieyu & Shao, Xinyu & Li, Jinhang & Huang, Gang, 2012. "Scale-free properties of information flux networks in genetic algorithms," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(4), pages 1692-1701.
    6. Rafael Prieto Curiel & Luca Pappalardo & Lorenzo Gabrielli & Steven Richard Bishop, 2018. "Gravity and scaling laws of city to city migration," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-19, July.
    7. Alfarano, Simone & Milakovic, Mishael, 2009. "Network structure and N-dependence in agent-based herding models," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 78-92, January.
    8. Wang, Jian & Song, Weiguo & Zheng, Hongyang & Telesca, Luciano, 2010. "Temporal scaling behavior of human-caused fires and their connection to relative humidity of the atmosphere," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 85-89.
    9. Csáji, Balázs Cs. & Browet, Arnaud & Traag, V.A. & Delvenne, Jean-Charles & Huens, Etienne & Van Dooren, Paul & Smoreda, Zbigniew & Blondel, Vincent D., 2013. "Exploring the mobility of mobile phone users," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(6), pages 1459-1473.
    10. Tobias Scholl & Antonios Garas & Frank Schweitzer, 2018. "The spatial component of R&D networks," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 417-436, April.
    11. Mohd-Zaid, Fairul & Kabban, Christine M. Schubert & Deckro, Richard F. & White, Edward D., 2017. "Parameter specification for the degree distribution of simulated Barabási–Albert graphs," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 465(C), pages 141-152.
    12. Ferreira, A.S. & Raposo, E.P. & Viswanathan, G.M. & da Luz, M.G.E., 2012. "The influence of the environment on Lévy random search efficiency: Fractality and memory effects," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(11), pages 3234-3246.
    13. Jennie Bai & Massimo Massa, 2021. "Is Human-Interaction-based Information Substitutable? Evidence from Lockdown," NBER Working Papers 29513, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Blake, David & Caulfield, Tristan & Ioannidis, Christos & Tonks, Ian, 2014. "Improved inference in the evaluation of mutual fund performance using panel bootstrap methods," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 183(2), pages 202-210.
    15. Miguel Picornell & Tomás Ruiz & Maxime Lenormand & José Ramasco & Thibaut Dubernet & Enrique Frías-Martínez, 2015. "Exploring the potential of phone call data to characterize the relationship between social network and travel behavior," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 647-668, July.
    16. Li, Lu & Li, Yihang & Wang, Xueding & Xiao, Tusheng & Zhu, Hongjun, 2022. "Hedge fund networks, information dissemination, and stock price comovement: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    17. He, He & Yang, Bo & Hu, Xiaoming, 2016. "Exploring community structure in networks by consensus dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 450(C), pages 342-353.
    18. Rudiger Ahrend & Cyrille Schwellnus, 2013. "Do investors disproportionately shed assets of distant countries during global financial crises?: The role of increased uncertainty," OECD Journal: Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2012(1), pages 1-20.
    19. He, Xue-Zhong & Li, Kai & Santi, Caterina & Shi, Lei, 2022. "Social interaction, volatility clustering, and momentum," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 125-149.
    20. Reinhard A. Weisser, 2020. "How Personality Shapes Study Location Choices," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 61(1), pages 88-116, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:389:y:2010:i:21:p:4913-4917. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.