Job Information Networks, Neighborhood Effects, and Inequality

This paper explores the theoretical and empirical literature to examine the use by different social groups of informal sources of information provided by friends, relatives, and acquaintances during job search and its consequences for the job market. It also addresses the role of network structure and size, the resource endowments of contacts, and nature of the links between contacts to explain differences in the effects of job information networks. In doing so, the paper also turns to the sociology literature on job information networks and provides an economic perspective on such sociological concepts as strong versus weak ties, inbreeding, distance from structural holes, etc. The paper distinguishes between…