Social connections and cultural heterogeneity

This paper proposes an evolutionary model in which the assortativity level of matching is endogenously determined. We consider a population consisting of two cultural groups. Each group has a leader who aims to maximize the group’s average fitness by exerting costly effort to enhance either within-g...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wu, J. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer New York LLC 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
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008 220511s2019 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 09369937 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a Social connections and cultural heterogeneity 
260 0 |b Springer New York LLC  |c 2019 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-018-0597-x 
520 3 |a This paper proposes an evolutionary model in which the assortativity level of matching is endogenously determined. We consider a population consisting of two cultural groups. Each group has a leader who aims to maximize the group’s average fitness by exerting costly effort to enhance either within-group or cross-group social connections. Within-group social connections increase the assortativity level of matching and promote segregation, while cross-group social connections decrease the assortativity level of matching and encourage integration. We find that the endogenous process by which the assortativity level is determined can generate an intermediate level of assortativity that is neither complete segregation nor maximal integration and lead to a rich set of cultural phenomena including cultural heterogeneity, which cannot be accounted for in many cases if the assortativity level is given exogenously. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. 
650 0 4 |a Assortative matching 
650 0 4 |a Cultural heterogeneity 
650 0 4 |a Cultural leaders 
650 0 4 |a Evolutionary game theory 
650 0 4 |a Social connections 
700 1 |a Wu, J.  |e author 
773 |t Journal of Evolutionary Economics