Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/89505 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2007/09
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
Schelling (1969, 1971a,b, 1978) considered a simple proximity model of segregation where individual agents only care about the types of people living in their own local geographical neighborhood, the spatial structure being represented by one- or two-dimensional lattices. In this paper, we argue that segregation might occur not only in the geographical space, but also in social environments. Furthermore, recent empirical studies have documented that social interaction structures are well-described by small-world networks. We generalize Schelling's model by allowing agents to interact in small-world networks instead of regular lattices. We study two alternative dynamic models where agents can decide to move either arbitrarily far away (global model) or are bound to choose an alternative location in their social neighborhood (local model). Our main result is that the system attains levels of segregation that are in line with those reached in the lattice-based spatial proximity model. Thus, Schelling's original results seem to be robust to the structural properties of the network.
Subjects: 
Spatial proximity model
Social segregation
Schelling
Proximity preferences
Social networks
Small worlds
Scale-free networks
Best-response dynamics
JEL: 
C72
C73
D62
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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