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Gossip: Identifying Central Individuals in a Social Network

Author

Listed:
  • Abhijit Banerjee
  • Arun G Chandrasekhar
  • Esther Duflo
  • Mathew O. Jackson

Abstract

The paper examines individuals’ abilities to identify the highly central people in their social networks, where centrality is defined by diffusion centrality (Banerjee, Chandrasekhar, Duflo, and Jackson, 2013), which characterizes a node’s influence in spreading information. It first show that diffusion centrality nests standard centrality measures – degree, eigenvector and Katz-Bonacich centrality – as extreme special cases. Next, it shows that boundedly rational individuals can, simply by tracking sources of gossip, identify who is central in their social network in the specific sense of having high diffusion centrality.

Suggested Citation

  • Abhijit Banerjee & Arun G Chandrasekhar & Esther Duflo & Mathew O. Jackson, 2014. "Gossip: Identifying Central Individuals in a Social Network," Working Papers id:5925, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:5925
    Note: Institutional Papers
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    Keywords

    Centrality; Gossip; Networks; Diffusion; Influence; Social Learning; Social networks; Diffusion Centrality; Standard Centrality Measures; Sources of Gossip.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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