1. Eliciting real-life social networks: a guided tour
- Author
-
Brañas Garza, Pablo, Jiménez, Natalia, Ponti, Giovanni Benedetto, Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico, and Microeconomía Aplicada (GIMA)
- Subjects
Fundamentos del Análisis Económico ,Economic experiments ,economic experiments ,Coordination games ,Social networks, economic experiments, coordination games ,coordination games ,Social networks - Abstract
This paper surveys some of the mechanisms that have been proposed by the experimental literature to elicit social networks. These mechanisms differ in their incentive structures, as well as the means of reward they employ. We compare these elicitation devices on the basis of the estimated differences in the characteristics of the induced networks, such as the number of (mutual) links, correspondence and accuracy. Our main conclusion is that the elicited network architecture is itself dependent on the structure (and the nature) of the incentives. This, in turn, provides the social scientist with guidelines on the most appropriate device to use, depending on her research objectives. Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ECO2015-65820-P and ECO2013-44879-R), Junta de Andalucia (P12.SEJ.1436), Generalitat Valenciana (Research Projects Grupos 3/086) and Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Econ´omicas (IVIE) is gratefully acknowledged.
- Published
- 2017