Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/129868 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IEHAS Discussion Papers No. MT-DP - 2015/50
Publisher: 
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economics, Budapest
Abstract: 
This paper provides a new empirical perspective for analysing the role of social networks for an economic geography approach on regional economic growth by constructing large-scale networks from employee-employee co-occurrences in plants in the entire Swedish economy 1990-2008. We calculate the probability of employee-employee ties at plant level based on homophily-biased random network assumptions and trace the most probable relations of every employee over the full period. Then, we look at the inter-plant ties for the 1995-2008 period because the network is already well developed after five years of edge construction. We argue that these personal acquaintances are important for local learning opportunities and consequently for regional growth. Indeed, the estimated panel Vector Autoregressive models provide the first systematic evidence for a central claim in economic geography: social network density has positive effect on regional productivity growth. The results are robust against removing the old and therefore weak ties from the network. Interestingly, the positive effect of density on growth was found in a segment of the co-worker network as well, in which plants have never been linked by labour mobility previously.
Subjects: 
social network
homophily
probability of ties
labour mobility
regional productivity growth
panel vector autoregression
JEL: 
D85
J24
J61
R11
R23
ISBN: 
978-615-5243-39-4
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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