Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/167554 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 6568
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Social interactions are considered pivotal to agglomeration economies. We explore a unique dataset on mobile phone calls to examine how distance and population density shape the structure of social interactions. Exploiting an exogenous change in travel times, we show that distance is highly detrimental to interpersonal exchange. Despite distance-related costs, we find no evidence that urban residents benefit from larger networks when spatial sorting is accounted for. Higher density rather generates a more efficient network in terms of matching and clustering. These differences in network structure capitalize into land prices, corroborating the hypothesis that agglomeration economies operate via network efficiency.
Subjects: 
social interactions
agglomeration externalities
network analysis
spatial sorting
JEL: 
R10
R23
D83
D85
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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