ABSTRACT

Over the last two or three decades, both sociologists and economists have stressed the importance of social ties in life and in particular, in infl uencing and shaping individual outcomes. Sociologists have long pointed to the transformation of the social environment in modern societies, shifting away from families of fate to families of choice. The new technologies of communication have expanded substantially the set of ‘potential’ friends, and the popularity of Web-based sites fostering the formation of friendship ties (such as facebook.com, for example) has increased tremendously over the last few years. It is therefore not surprising that economists and sociologists have devoted considerable attention to the role of these chosen social ties. Social scientists list different reasons why social networks may be valuable. The most obvious reason is that social relations have an intrinsic value; people enjoy and benefi t from interacting with their friends or relatives. But next to that, social networks have also been found to have a valuable instrumental value, by providing access to resources, such as information or material goods (Granovetter 1973). The evidence gathered in many different contexts shows that social networks matter substantially in shaping economic outcomes. For example, there is a growing literature on the role of informal networks in fi nding a job. Granovetter (2005) stressed the importance of weak ties in the job process, in comparison to strong ties, as they are more likely to provide access to information not available otherwise.