This thesis examines the role of social networks and social interactions in three
different contexts: out-migration, academic collaborations and international diffusion
of knowledge. The analysis is presented in three self-contained essays.
The second chapter (joint work) contains analysis of factors influencing the
intention to out-migrate, with a distinction between intention to migrate locally
(within a country) and internationally. We consider a broad range of factors, including
variables of traditional interest to economists, such as wealth/income of an
individual and their education, but also other variables, such as the satisfaction
with local and country-level amenities, and, most importantly, measures of social
networks at their current location and abroad. We find that social networks play
an important role in explaining migration intentions, especially for international
migration intention.
In the third chapter, the role of social networks in providing access to nonredundant
information/resources is explored using micro-level data on 35 thousand
academic economists. The collaboration network of economists is used to examine
how access to non-redundant information affects the quality of joint academic work.
This approach can explain a number of ‘diversity premia’ observed in the literature,
for example the international collaboration premium disappears once the co-authors’
access to non-redundant information is taken into account.
The concluding chapter explores the importance of social interactions for international
diffusion of knowledge. Specifically, the information on the administrative
barriers to mobility (e.g. travel visas) is used to estimate how the increased costs
of face-to-face contact affect the diffusion of knowledge. The results of an empirical,
gravity-style analysis show that reduced mobility of researchers has a significant
negative impact on the bilateral country-level knowledge flows. The estimated effect
of an administrative barrier is twice as strong for the flows of recent knowledge. The
effect is persistent, lasting for up to 7-8 years, suggesting that ‘paper walls’ can play
a significant role in medium-term development of domestic scientific potential