Getting Closer or Drifting Apart
| Title: | Getting Closer or Drifting Apart |
| Author: |
Rosenblat, Tanya; Mobius, Markus
Note: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors. |
| Citation: | Rosenblat, Tanya S. and Markus M. Mobius. 2004. Getting closer or drifting apart. Quarterly Journal of Economics 119(3): 971-1009. |
| Full Text & Related Files: |
Mobius_CloserDrifting.pdf (384.4Kb; PDF) 
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| Abstract: | Advances in communication and transportation technologies have the potential to bring people closer together and create a "global village." However, they also allow heterogeneous agents to segregate along special interests, which gives rise to communities fragmented by type rather than by geography. We show that lower communication costs should always decrease separation between individual agents even as group-based separation increases. Each measure of separation is pertinent for distinct types of social interaction. A group-based measure captures the diversity of group preferences that can have an impact on the provision of public goods. While an individual measure correlates with the speed of information transmission through the social network that affects, for example, learning about job opportunities and new technologies. We test the model by looking at coauthoring between academic economists before and during the rise of the Internet in the 1990s. |
| Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/0033553041502199 |
| Terms of Use: | This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAA |
| Citable link to this page: | http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3043419 |
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Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University
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