Homophily Effects: Hanging Out With Others Like Yourself

Brayden King, assistant professor in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, mentions on his blog, orgtheory.net, interesting research and a forthcoming paper by Sinan Aral, faculty at NYU Stern School of Business.

King attended a recent conference, mentions Aral's paper as a highlight and says:

Sinan Aral’s paper distinguished between the effects of homophily (i.e., the tendency of similar people to know each other and, consequently, to do the same kinds of stuff) and direct network links on the adoption of a technology. The paper very effectively shows that when you control for selection effects due to homophily, direct network links do not account for as much technology adoption as you might think.

Read King's complete blog post here.