IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v102y2012i5p1857-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Capital and Social Quilts: Network Patterns of Favor Exchange

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew O. Jackson
  • Tomas Rodriguez-Barraquer
  • Xu Tan

Abstract

We examine the informal exchange of favors in societies such that any two individuals interact too infrequently to sustain exchange, but such that the social pressure of the possible loss of multiple relationships can sustain exchange. Patterns of exchange that are locally enforceable and renegotiation-proof necessitate that all links are "supported": any two individuals exchanging favors have a common friend. In symmetric settings, such robust networks are "social quilts": tree-like unions of completely connected subnetworks. Examining favor exchange networks in 75 villages in rural India, we find high levels of support and identify characteristics that correlate with support. (JEL D85, O12, O18, Z13)

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew O. Jackson & Tomas Rodriguez-Barraquer & Xu Tan, 2012. "Social Capital and Social Quilts: Network Patterns of Favor Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 1857-1897, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:102:y:2012:i:5:p:1857-97
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.102.5.1857
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/aug2012/20100760_data.zip
    File Function: dataset accompanying article
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dean Karlan & Markus Mobius & Tanya Rosenblat & Adam Szeidl, 2009. "Trust and Social Collateral," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1307-1361.
    2. Spagnolo, Giancarlo & Lippert, Steffen, 2004. "Networks of Relations," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 570, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 04 Jun 2010.
    3. David Miller & Nageeb Ali, 2008. "Cooperation and Collective Enforcement in Networked Societies," 2008 Meeting Papers 970, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Guido Tabellini, 2010. "Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 677-716, June.
    5. Greif, Avner, 1989. "Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 857-882, December.
    6. Mihm, Maximilian & Toth, Russell & Lang, Corey, 2009. "What Goes Around Comes Around: A Theory of Indirect Reciprocity in Networks," Working Papers 09-07, Cornell University, Center for Analytic Economics.
    7. Joel Sobel, 2002. "Can We Trust Social Capital?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 139-154, March.
    8. Lippert, Steffen & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2011. "Networks of relations and Word-of-Mouth Communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 202-217, May.
    9. Fehr, Ernst & Schmidt, Klaus M., 2006. "The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism - Experimental Evidence and New Theories," Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism, in: S. Kolm & Jean Mercier Ythier (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 615-691, Elsevier.
    10. Douglas Bernheim, B. & Ray, Debraj, 1989. "Collective dynamic consistency in repeated games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 295-326, December.
    11. Abrea Dilip & Pearce David & Stacchetti Ennio, 1993. "Renegotiation and Symmetry in Repeated Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 217-240, August.
    12. Francis Bloch & Garance Genicot & Debraj Ray, 2007. "Reciprocity in Groups and the Limits to Social Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 65-69, May.
    13. Matthew O. Jackson & Brian W. Rogers, 2007. "Meeting Strangers and Friends of Friends: How Random Are Social Networks?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 890-915, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthew O. Jackson, 2020. "A typology of social capital and associated network measures," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 311-336, March.
    2. Balmaceda, Felipe & Escobar, Juan F., 2017. "Trust in cohesive communities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 289-318.
    3. Jackson, Matthew O. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Games on Networks," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    4. Javier Mejia, 2018. "Social Networks and Entrepreneurship. Evidence from a Historical Episode of Industrialization," Documentos CEDE 16380, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    5. Itay P. Fainmesser, 2012. "Community Structure and Market Outcomes: A Repeated Games-in-Networks Approach," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 32-69, February.
    6. Fainmesser, Itay P. & Goldberg, David A., 2018. "Cooperation in partly observable networked markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 220-237.
    7. Itay P. Fainmesser & David A. Goldberg, 2011. "Bilateral and Community Enforcement in a Networked Market with Simple Strategies," Working Papers 2011-2, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    8. Lippert, Steffen & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2011. "Networks of relations and Word-of-Mouth Communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 202-217, May.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Alexander Wolitzky, 2015. "Sustaining Cooperation: Community Enforcement vs. Specialized Enforcement," NBER Working Papers 21457, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Feinberg, Yossi & Kets, Willemien, 2014. "Ranking friends," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 1-9.
    11. Shijun Chai & Yang Chen & Bihong Huang & Dezhu Ye, 2019. "Social networks and informal financial inclusion in China," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 529-563, June.
    12. Matthew O. Jackson & Brian W. Rogers & Yves Zenou, 2017. "The Economic Consequences of Social-Network Structure," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(1), pages 49-95, March.
    13. Oguzhan Celebi, 2023. "Substitutability in Favor Exchange," Papers 2309.10749, arXiv.org.
    14. Mihm, Maximilian & Toth, Russell, 2020. "Cooperative networks with robust private monitoring," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    15. Fainmesser, Itay P., 2019. "Exclusive intermediation in unobservable networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 533-548.
    16. V. Masson & S. Choi & A. Moore & M. Oak, 2018. "A model of informal favor exchange on networks," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 639-656, October.
    17. Carayol, Nicolas & Bergé, Laurent & Cassi, Lorenzo & Roux, Pascale, 2019. "Unintended triadic closure in social networks: The strategic formation of research collaborations between French inventors," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 218-238.
    18. Fernando Vega-Redondo & Paolo Pin & Diego Ubfal & Cristiana Benedetti-Fasil & Charles Brummitt & Gaia Rubera & Dirk Hovy & Tommaso Fornaciari, 2019. "Peer Networks and Entrepreneurship: a Pan-African RCT," Working Papers 648, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    19. Polanski, Arnold, 2024. "Close-knit neighborhoods: Stability of cooperation in networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    20. Ruiz-Palazuelos, Sofía & Espinosa, María Paz & Kovářík, Jaromír, 2023. "The weakness of common job contacts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Social Capital and Social Quilts: Network Patterns of Favor Exchange (AER 2012) in ReplicationWiki

    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:aea:aecrev:v:102:y:2012:i:5:p:1857-97. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.