Wages and Employment in a Random Social Network with Arbitrary Degree Distribution

TI Discussion Paper No. 06-014/1

13 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2006

Date Written: January 2006

Abstract

Empirical studies of labor markets show that social contacts are an important source of job-related information [Ioannides and Loury (2004)]. At the same time, wage differences among workers may be explained only in part by differences in individual background characteristics. Such findings motivate our model in which differences in social connectedness among otherwise identical workers result in wage inequality and differences in unemployment rates. The paper is related to theoretical contributions by Calvo-Armengol and Jackson (2004) and Calvo-Armengol and Zenou (2005) and builds on the Pissarides (2000) model. Workers may hear about job openings directly from employers or through their social contacts. We go further by introducing heterogeneity in the number of contacts each worker has with others, i.e., in the workers' degree. We utilize results from the technical literature on random graphs with arbitrary degree distributions [Newman, (2003a)] to account for a consequence of workers' receiving information about job openings from their social contacts: they compete with their social contacts' other contacts. For social networks with arbitrary degree distributions we show that people who are better connected receive a higher wage on average and face a lower unemployment rate. Numerical computations for the specific case in which connections follow a Poisson distribution show that variability in connections can result in substantial variation in the above labor market outcomes.

Keywords: job search, social networks, arbitrary degree distribution, wage inequality, incidence of unemployment

JEL Classification: D83, J31, J64

Suggested Citation

Ioannides, Yannis M. and Soetevent, Adriaan R., Wages and Employment in a Random Social Network with Arbitrary Degree Distribution (January 2006). TI Discussion Paper No. 06-014/1, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=879709 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.879709

Yannis M. Ioannides (Contact Author)

Tufts University ( email )

177 College Avenue
Medford, MA 02155
United States
6176273294 (Phone)
6176273917 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.tufts.edu/yioannides/

Adriaan R. Soetevent

University of Groningen ( email )

P.O. Box 800
9700 AV Groningen
Netherlands
++ 31 50 363 7018 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.soetevent.com