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on Network Economics |
| By: | Cecere, Grazia; Le Guel, Fabrice; Soulié, Nicolas |
| Abstract: | The development of computing technologies and Internet has made possible to capture, save and analyse increasing mount of personal information, which might impact public concern about privacy. The present article aims at analysing Internet privacy concerns in respect to social network website. We use a well-suited dataset of 23 087 individuals collected by the European Union in 2009 in all member states. Fitting an ordered logit model, we examine the variables associated with the probability to have high privacy concerns in order to draw policy and regulatory implications. The results show that institutional framework ensuring comprehensive national efforts to safeguard privacy increases the probability to be worried about possible misuse of private data. Additionally, we observe that socio-demographic variables affect the perception of individual personal data use/misuse. |
| Keywords: | economics of privacy; social network websites; privacy paradox |
| JEL: | L96 D12 K39 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:41437&r=net |
| By: | Jeon, Doh-Shin; Jullien, Bruno; Klimenko, Mikhail M. |
| Abstract: | The World Wide Web was originally a totally English-based medium due to its US origin. Although the presence of other languages has steadily risen, content in English is still dominant, which raises a natural question of how bilingualism of consumers of a home country affects production of web content in the home language and domestic welfare? In this paper, we address this question by studying how bilingualism affects competition between a foreign search engine and a domestic one within a small country and thereby production of home language content. We find that bilingualism unambiguously softens platform competition, which in turn can induce a reduction in home language content and in home country's welfare. In particular, it is possible that content in the foreign language crowds out so much content in the home language that consumers enjoy less content when they are bilingual than when they are monolingual. |
| Keywords: | bilingualism; international trade; language; platform; search engine; two-sided market |
| JEL: | D21 D43 F12 L13 L86 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9144&r=net |
| By: | Dahl, Gordon B. (Department of Economics, UC San Diego); Løken, Katrine V. (Department of Economics, University of Bergen); Mogstad, Magne (Department of Economics, University College London) |
| Abstract: | The influence of peers could play an important role in the take up of social programs. However, estimating peer effects has proven challenging given the problems of reflection, correlated unobservables, and endogenous group membership. We overcome these identification issues in the context of paid paternity leave in Norway using a regression discontinuity design. In an attempt to promote gender equality, a reform made fathers of children born after April 1, 1993 in Norway eligible for one month of governmental paid paternity leave. Fathers of children born before this cutoff were not eligible. There is a sharp increase in fathers taking paternity leave immediately after the reform, with take up rising from 3% to 35%. While this quasi-random variation changed the cost of paternity leave for some fathers and not others, it did not directly affect the cost for the father’s coworkers or brothers. Therefore, any effect on the coworker or brother can be attributed to the influence of the peer father in their network. Our key findings on peer effects are four-fold. First, we find strong evidence for substantial peer effects of program participation in both workplace and family networks. Coworkers and brothers are 11 and 15 percentage points, respectively, more likely to take paternity leave if their peer father was induced to take up leave by the reform. Second, the most likely mechanism is information transmission about costs and benefits, including increased knowledge of how an employer will react. Third, there is essential heterogeneity in the size of the peer effect depending on the strength of ties between peers, highlighting the importance of duration, intensity, and frequency of social interactions. Fourth, the estimated peer effect gets amplified over time, with each subsequent birth exhibiting a snowball effect as the original peer father’s influence cascades through a firm. Our findings demonstrate that peer effects can lead to long-run equilibrium participation rates which are substantially higher than would otherwise be expected. |
| Keywords: | Program Participation; Social Interactions |
| JEL: | H53 I38 J13 |
| Date: | 2012–09–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:bergec:2012_012&r=net |
| By: | Nicol\'o Musmeci; Stefano Battiston; Guido Caldarelli; Michelangelo Puliga; Andrea Gabrielli |
| Abstract: | We present a novel method to reconstruct complex network from partial information. We assume to know the links only for a subset of the nodes and to know some non-topological quantity (fitness) characterising every node. The missing links are generated on the basis of the latter quan- tity according to a fitness model calibrated on the subset of nodes for which links are known. We measure the quality of the reconstruction of several topological properties, such as the network density and the degree distri- bution as a function of the size of the initial subset of nodes. Moreover, we also study the resilience of the network to distress propagation. We first test the method on ensembles of synthetic networks generated with the Exponential Random Graph model which allows to apply common tools from statistical mechanics. We then test it on the empirical case of the World Trade Web. In both cases, we find that a subset of 10 % of nodes is enough to reconstruct the main features of the network along with its resilience with an error of 5%. |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1209.6459&r=net |
| By: | Massimo Filippini (Department of Economics, University of Lugano; ETH, Zurich, Switzerland); Martin Koller (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of cost efficiency of Swiss Post's postal delivery units to enable policy makers' as well as Swiss Post to decide on the reactions to market changes. In particular, we use different panel data models to assess cost efficiency in these units to account for unobserved heterogeneity. The results from applying Mundlak's formulation to the Pooled stochastic frontier model provides evidence that this model is not affected by a heterogeneity bias and that the cost efficiency values lie within a lower and upper bound of the other recent and standard econometric frontier models. Overall, the analysis shows that assumptions on unobserved heterogeneity are crucial and that results of econometric cost efficiency measurement models have to be interpreted with corresponding caution. |
| Keywords: | cost efficiency, stochastic frontier models, unobserved heterogeneity, Mundlak, postal delivery network |
| JEL: | C33 D24 H42 L87 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lug:wpaper:1206&r=net |
| By: | Gabrieli, S. |
| Abstract: | What influences banks’ borrowing costs in the unsecured money market? The objective of this paper is to test whether measures of centrality, quantifying network effects due to interactions among banks in the market, can help explain heterogeneous patterns in the interest rates paid to borrow unsecured funds once bank size and other bank and market factors that affect the overnight segment are controlled for. Preliminary evidence shows that large banks borrow on average at better rates compared to smaller institutions, both before and after the start of the financial crisis. Nonetheless, controlling for size, centrality measures can capture part of the cross-sectional variation in overnight rates. More specifically: (1) Before the start of the crisis all the banks, independently of their size, profit from different forms of interconnectedness, but the economic size of the effect is small. Bank reputation and perceived credit riskiness are the most relevant factors to reduce average daily interest rates. Foreign banks borrow at a discount over Italian ones. (2) After August 2007 the impact of banks’ interconnectedness becomes larger but changes sign: the “reward” stemming from a higher centrality becomes a “punishment”, which possibly reflects market discipline. Bank reputation becomes even more important. (3) After Lehman’s bankruptcy the effect of centrality on the spread maintains the same sign as after August 2007, but the magnitude increases remarkably. Foreign banks borrow at a relevant premium over Italian ones; reputation becomes outstandingly more important than in normal times. |
| Keywords: | Network centrality; Interbank market; Financial crisis; Money market integration; Macro-prudential analysis. |
| JEL: | C23 D85 G01 G21 G28 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:398&r=net |
| By: | Jacques Mélitz (Heriot-Watt University,CEPR,CREST,CEPII) |
| Abstract: | The paper proposes a general model that will encompass trade and social benefits of a common language, a preference for a variety of languages, the fundamental role of translators, an emotional attachment to maternal language, and the threat that globalization poses to the vast majority of languages. With respect to people’s emotional attachment, the model considers minorities to suffer losses from the subordinate status of their language. In addition, the model treats the threat to minority language as coming from the failure of the parents in the minority to transmit their maternal language (durably) to their children. Some familiar results occur. In particular, we encounter the usual social inefficiencies of decentralized solutions to language learning when the sole benefits of the learning are communicative benefits (though translation intervenes). However, these social inefficiencies assume a totally different air when the consumer gains of variety are brought in. One fundamental aim of the paper is to bring together contributions to the economics of language from labor economics, network externalities and international trade that are typically treated separately |
| Keywords: | Language, Welfare, Trade |
| JEL: | D60 F10 Z10 |
| Date: | 2012–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crs:wpaper:2012-14&r=net |