How Friendships Form
Venue
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 121 (2006)
Publication Year
2006
Authors
David Marmaros, Bruce Sacerdote
BibTeX
Abstract
We examine how people form social networks among their peers. We use a unique data
set that tells us the volume of email between any two people in the sample. The
data are from students and recent graduates of Dartmouth College. First-year
students interact with peers in their immediate proximity and form long-term
friendships with a subset of these people. This result is consistent with a model
in which the expected value of interacting with an unknown person is low (making
traveling solely to meet new people unlikely), while the benefits from interacting
with the same person repeatedly are high. Geographic proximity and race are greater
determinants of social interaction than are common interests, majors, or family
background.
