Economic networks

Social relations are crucial for understanding diverse economicactions and a network perspective is central to that explanation. Simpleexchanges involving money, labor, and commodities combine intocomplexly connected systems. Economic networks span many levels ofanalysis, from persons (consumers, employees), to groups (households,workteams), organizations (corporations, interest groups), populations(industries, markets) and the rapidly expanding global economic system.David Knoke blends network theories from a range of disciplines andempirical studies of domestic and international economies to illuminatehow economic activity is embedded in and constrained by social tiesamong economic actors. Social capital, in the form of connections toothers holding valuable resources, is vital for finding a job, buying acar, creating a new industry, or triggering a global financial crisis.In nontechnical terms the author explicates the core network concepts,measures, and analysis methods behind these phenomena. The book alsoincludes many striking network diagrams to provide visual insights intocomplex structural patterns.This accessible book offers an invaluable critique for bothundergraduate and graduate students in economic sociology and socialnetwork analysis courses who seek a better understanding of themultifaceted economic webs in which we are all entangled.