Social networks and experienced inequality

IF 2.3 3区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Pub Date : 2024-11-22 DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106799

Sai Madhurika Mamunuru , Anand Shrivastava , Arjun Jayadev

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Abstract

Traditional measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, involve pairwise comparisons across all members of a given population. But, most people possess information about, and therefore experience inequality in comparison to, only a subset of the population. In this paper, we provide simple axioms to describe inequality as experienced in social networks. We propose an index to measure aggregate experienced inequality that is consistent with these axioms. We then compute the Gini coefficient and ‘experienced inequality’ in 75 villages in Karnataka, India. We show that for a given wealth distribution, the social network could either accentuate or diminish experienced inequality. We show, first analytically and then empirically, how this can happen with respect to two network properties. Firstly, wealth-based homophily is negatively associated with experienced inequality. Secondly, caste-based homophily is negatively associated with experienced inequality when within-caste inequality is less than the overall Gini coefficient (and positively associated when the opposite is true).

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社会网络和经历的不平等

衡量不平等的传统方法，如基尼系数，涉及特定人口中所有成员的成对比较。但是，大多数人只掌握一部分人的信息，因此他们在与这部分人的比较中会感受到不平等。在本文中，我们提供了简单的公理来描述在社会网络中体验到的不平等。我们提出了一个与这些公理相一致的指数来衡量总体不平等现象。然后，我们计算了印度卡纳塔克邦 75 个村庄的基尼系数和 "经验不平等"。我们的研究表明，在给定的财富分布条件下，社会网络既可能加剧也可能减弱经验不平等。我们首先从分析的角度，然后从经验的角度，展示了如何通过两种网络特性来实现这一点。首先，基于财富的同质性与经验不平等呈负相关。其次，当种姓内的不平等小于总体基尼系数时，基于种姓的同质性与经验不平等呈负相关（反之则呈正相关）。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

3.80

自引率

9.10%

发文量

392

期刊介绍： The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is devoted to theoretical and empirical research concerning economic decision, organization and behavior and to economic change in all its aspects. Its specific purposes are to foster an improved understanding of how human cognitive, computational and informational characteristics influence the working of economic organizations and market economies and how an economy structural features lead to various types of micro and macro behavior, to changing patterns of development and to institutional evolution. Research with these purposes that explore the interrelations of economics with other disciplines such as biology, psychology, law, anthropology, sociology and mathematics is particularly welcome.