Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

An Economist’s Guide to Economic History pp 433–441Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Network Analysis

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 2619 Accesses

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

Abstract

Network analysis allows for the identification and analysis of linkages formed by the interaction, communication, and trade of individuals, families, and firms, as well as the spread of information and technologies. This chapter develops the notation sufficient to understand a discussion of networks. Its author reviews two analytical approaches to network structures and surveys some of the areas in which economic historians have deployed social network analysis.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The interdisciplinary development of network analysis is surveyed in Newman (2010). As with other areas of the social sciences, formal analysis of networks has benefited from the increased power of personal computing, which has greatly reduced the computational burden of visualising and analysing social networks.

  2. 2.

    Density is the number of observed connections over the number of possible connections.

  3. 3.

    There are many studies of financial contagion networks (Mitchener and Richardson 2016; Calomiris and Carlson 2017); for a review see Summer (2013).

  4. 4.

    See, for instance, the collection of studies in Gestrich and Beerbühl (2011).

  5. 5.

    See the comprehensive survey on this topic by Chandrasekhar and Lewis (2016).

  6. 6.

    The review of spatial econometric models in Vega and Elhorst (2015) provides a useful discussion of this issue.

Reading List

  • Becker, S.O., S. Pfaff, and J. Rubin. 2016. Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation. Explorations in Economic History 62: 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boucher, Vincent, and Bernard Fortin. 2016. Some Challenges in the Empirics of the Effects of Networks. In The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks, ed. Yann Bramoullé, Andrea Galeotti, and Brian Rogers, 277–302. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bramoullé, Yann, Habiba Djebbari, and Bernard Fortin. 2009. Identification of Peer Effects through Social Networks. Journal of Econometrics 150 (1): 41–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Braudel, F. 1982. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Vol. II: The Wheels of Commerce. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchnea, Emily. 2014. Transatlantic Transformations: Visualizing Change Over Time in the Liverpool-New York Trade Network, 1763–1833. Enterprise and Society 15 (4): 687–721.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calomiris, Charles W., and Mark Carlson. 2017. Interbank Networks in the National Banking Era: Their Purpose and Their Role in the Panic of 1893. Journal of Financial Economics 125 (3): 434–453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chandrasekhar, Arun G., and Randall Lewis. 2016. Econometrics of Sampled Networks. Mimeo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colvin, Christopher L., Abe de Jong, and Philip T. Fliers. 2015. Predicting the Past: Understanding the Causes of Bank Distress in the Netherlands in the 1920s. Explorations in Economic History 55: 97–121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Giorgi, Giacomo, Michele Pellizzari, and Silvia Redaell. 2010. Identification of Social Interactions through Partially Overlapping Peer Groups. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2 (2): 241–275.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erikson, Emily, and Peter Bearman. 2006. Malfeasance and the Foundations for Global Trade: The Structure of English Trade in the East Indies, 1601–1833. American Journal of Sociology 112 (1): 195–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Esteves, Rui, and Gabriel Geisler Mesevage. 2017. The Rise of New Corruption: British MPs During the Railway Mania of 1845. Centre for Economic Policy Research, No. DP12182 (July).

    Google Scholar 

  • Flandreau, Marc, and Clemens Jobst. 2005. The Ties That Divide: A Network Analysis of the International Monetary System, 1890–1910. The Journal of Economic History 65 (4): 977–1007.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fohlin, Caroline. 1998. Relationship Banking, Liquidity, and Investment in the German Industrialization. Journal of Finance 53 (5): 1737–1758.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gestrich, A., and M.S. Beerbühl, eds. 2011. Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society: 1660–1914. German Historical Institute: London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goyal, S. 2012. Connections: An Introduction to the Economics of Networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haggerty, John, and Sheryllynne Haggerty. 2011. The Life Cycle of a Metropolitan Business Network: Liverpool 1750–1810. Explorations in Economic History 48 (2): 189–206.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haggerty, Sheryllynne, and John Haggerty. 2015. Visual Analytics of an Eighteenth-Century Business Network. Enterprise and Society 11 (1): 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hancock, David. 2005. The Trouble with Networks: Managing the Scots’ Early-Modern Madeira Trade. Business History Review 79 (3): 467–491.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hillmann, Henning. 2008. Mediation in Multiple Networks: Elite Mobilization before the English Civil War. American Sociological Review 73 (3): 426-454.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Matthew O. 2010. Social and Economic Networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2016. The Past and Future of Network Analysis in Economics. In The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks, ed. Yann Bramoullé, Alberto Galeotti, and Brian Rogers, 71–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keleijan, Harry, and Ingmar Prucha. 1998. A Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares Procedure for Estimating a Spatial Autoregressive Model with Autoregressive Disturbances. Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 17 (1): 99–121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. Specification and Estimation of Spatial Autoregressive Models with Autoregressive and Heteroskedastic Disturbances. Journal of Econometrics 157: 53–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lampe, Markus. 2011. Explaining Nineteenth-Century Bilateralism: Economic and Political Determinants of the Cobden-Chevalier Network. Economic History Review 64 (2): 644–668.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lazer, David. 2011. Networks in Political Science: Back to the Future. PS—Political Science and Politics 44 (1): 61–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lluch, Andrea, Erica Salvaj, and María Inés Barbero. 2014. Corporate Networks and Business Groups in Argentina in the Early 1970s. Australian Economic History Review 54 (2): 183–208.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manski, Charles. 1993. Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem. Review of Economic Studies 60 (3): 531–542.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McLean, Paul, and John Padgett. 1997. Was Florence a Perfectly Competitive Market? Transactional Evidence from the Renaissance. Theory and Society 26 (2/3): 209–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchener, Kris James, and Gary Richardson. 2016. Network Contagion and Interbank Amplification during the Great Depression. NBER Working Paper Series, Paper No. w22074.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mizruchi, Mark S., and Eric J. Neuman. 2008. The Effect of Density on the Level of Bias in the Network Autocorrelation Model. Social Networks 30 (1): 190–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Musacchio, Aldo, and Ian Read. 2007. Bankers, Industrialists, and Their Cliques: Elite Networks in Mexico and Brazil during Early Industrialization. Enterprise and Society 8 (4): 842–880.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Mark. 2010. Networks: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nexon, Daniel. 2009. The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Padgett, John, and Christopher K. Ansell. 1993. Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400–1434. American Journal of Sociology 98 (6): 1259–1434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shalizi, Cosma Rohilla, and Andrew C. Thomas. 2011. Homophily and Contagion are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies. Sociological Methods & Research 40 (2): 211–239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Summer, Martin. 2013. Financial Contagion and Network Analysis. Annual Review of Financial Economics 5: 277–297.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vega, Solmaria Halleck, and J. Paul Elhorst. 2015. The SLX Model. Journal of Regional Science 55 (3): 339–363.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, Dan J., Xiaolin Shi, Daniel A. McFarland, and Jure Leskovec. 2012. Measurement Error in Network Data: A Re-classification. Social Networks 34 (4): 396–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ward, Michael D., Katherine Stovel, and Audrey Sacks. 2011. Network Analysis and Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science 14: 245–264.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Gabriel Geisler Mesevage

Authors
  1. Gabriel Geisler Mesevage
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Matthias Blum

  2. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Christopher L. Colvin

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Geisler Mesevage, G. (2018). Network Analysis. In: Blum, M., Colvin, C. (eds) An Economist’s Guide to Economic History. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96568-0_50

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96568-0_50

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96567-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96568-0

  • eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation