KEEPING UP WITH THE NEIGHBORS: SOCIAL INTERACTION IN A MARKET ECONOMY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ghiglino, Christian; Goyal, Sanjeev
• 署名单位: University of Essex; University of Cambridge
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1162/jeea.2010.8.1.90
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 90-119
• 关键词: NETWORKS

摘要

We consider a world in which individuals have private endowments and trade in markets while their utility is negatively affected by the consumption of their neighbors. Our interest is in understanding how the social structure of comparisons, taken together with the familiar fundamentals of the economy (endowments, technology, and preferences), shapes equilibrium prices, allocations, and welfare. We show that equilibrium prices and consumption are a function of a single network statistic: centrality. An individual's centrality is given by the weighted sum of paths of different lengths to all others in a social network. In particular, prices are proportional to the sum of centralities, and an individual's consumption depends on how central she is relative to others in the network. Inequalities in wealth and connections reinforce each other in markets: A transfer of resources from less to more central agents raises prices. As segregated communities become integrated, the poor lose while the rich gain in utility! (JEL: D5, D6, D85)