IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nad/wpaper/20210073(2).html

Clubs and Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Sihua Ding
  • Marcin DziubiÅ„ski
  • Sanjeev Goyal

    (Division of Social Science)

Abstract

A recurring theme in the study of society is the concentration of influence and power that is driven through unequal membership of groups and associations. In some instances these bodies constitute a small world while in others they are fragmented into distinct cliques. This paper presents a new model of clubs and networks to understand the sources of individual marginalization and the origins of different club networks. In our model, individuals seek to become members of clubs while clubs wish to have members. Club value is increasing in its size and in the strength of ties with other clubs. We show that a stable membership profile exhibits marginalization of individuals and that this is generally not welfare maximizing. Our second result shows that if returns from strength of ties are convex (concave) then stable memberships support fragmented networks with strong ties (small worlds held together by weak ties). We illustrate the value of these theoretical results through case studies of inter-locking directorates and boards of editors of journals.

Suggested Citation

  • Sihua Ding & Marcin DziubiÅ„ski & Sanjeev Goyal, 2021. "Clubs and Networks," Working Papers 20210073(2), New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Apr 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:nad:wpaper:20210073(2)
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://nyuad.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyuad/academics/divisions/social-science/working-papers/2021/0073(2).pdf
    File Function: Second version, 2022
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nad:wpaper:20210073(2). 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Alizeh Batra The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Alizeh Batra to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecnyuae.html .

    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.