Gergely Horvath

• PhD, University of Alicante (Spain)
• Professor (Associate) at Duke Kunshan University

We study the impact of segregation in social networks on the disparities in labor market outcomes between Black and White workers. We provide a dynamic search and matching model of the labor market where we incorporate two kinds of network effects: i) job finding through social contacts and ii) transmission of work norms by network neighbors. When...

In a Mortensen-Pissarides model of heterogeneous workers and jobs I investigate the effects of social networks as job information channel on the level of mismatch between workers and firms and I compare the efficiency of the formal market to that of social networks in producing good matches. I assume that employed individuals forward the offers at...

We experimentally study effort provision and network formation in the linear-quadratic game characterised by positive externality and complementarity of effort choices among network neighbours. We compare experimental outcomes to the equilibrium and efficient allocations and study the impact of group size and linking costs. We find that individuals...

We study experimentally whether receiving advice from an experienced decision-maker improves decisions in an infinite-horizon search task where individuals typically choose a lower reservation wage than the optimal value. In the experiment, advisors complete 10 rounds of search and leave advice to their advisees who also complete 10 rounds of searc...

In this paper, we compare different methods to extract skill demand from the text of job descriptions. We propose the fraction of wage variation explained by the extracted skills as a novel performance metric for the comparison of methods. Using this, we compare the performance of the word-counting method with three different dictionaries and that...

In this paper, we compare different methods to extract skill requirements from job advertisements. We consider three top-down methods that are based on expert-created dictionaries of keywords, and a bottom-up method of unsupervised topic modeling, the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model. We measure the skill requirements based on these methods...

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has the potential to disrupt centralized finance by validating peer-to-peer transactions through tamper-proof smart contracts and thus significantly lower the transaction cost charged by financial intermediaries. However, the actual realization of peer-to-peer transactions and the levels and effect of decentralization a...

This paper studies the assimilation of ethnic minority individuals to the native labor market and the impact of integration policies on assimilation. In our theoretical model, ethnic individuals choose, depending on their productivity level, among: entrepreneurship, assimilating to the native labor market, and being employed by coethnic entrepreneu...

We experimentally study the effectiveness of policy interventions in reducing the negative welfare effects of behavioral biases on job search. Due to quasi-hyperbolic discounting, individuals reduce their search effort and reservation wage, while the sunk-cost fallacy makes individuals decrease their reservation wage over the search spell. We compa...

We study the impact of social networks on the workers' labor market participation. We assume that individuals are heterogeneous with respect to the value of home production, which determines who participates in the labor market. Active individuals strategically form social links to obtain job information where the opportunity cost of networking is...

Online review is a crucial display content of many online shopping platforms and an essential source of product information for consumers. Low-quality reviews often cause inconvenience to the platform and review readers. This article aims to help Steam, one of the largest digital distribution platforms, predict the review helpfulness and funniness....

Little is known about whether behavioral techniques, such as nudges, can serve as effective policy tools to reduce the consumption of positional goods. We study a game, in which individuals are embedded in a social network and compete for a positional advantage with their direct neighbors by purchasing a positional good. In a series of experiments,...

This paper studies the impact of marital status on job finding in China using the correspondence methodology. Fictitious CVs are sent to job advertisements through an online job board website, focusing on financial and accounting jobs, and the callback rate is measured. We vary the gender and marital status on otherwise identical CVs. The previous...

We experimentally study the positional concerns of individuals embedded in social networks. In the game, individuals compete for positional advantage with their direct neighbors by purchasing a positional good. The Nash equilibrium consumption is determined by the Katz-Bonacich centrality of the individual's network position, while the efficient ou...

This paper studies the assimilation of ethnic minority individuals to the native labor market and the impact of integration policies on assimilation. In our theoretical model, ethnic individuals choose, depending on their productivity level, among: entrepreneurship, assimilating to the native labor market, and being employed by co-ethnic entreprene...

Little is known about whether behavioral techniques, such as nudges, can serve as effective policy tools to reduce the consumption of positional goods. We study a game, in which individuals are embedded in a social network and compete for a positional advantage with their direct neighbors by purchasing a positional good. In a series of experiments,...

In this paper we examine diffusion of responsibility in a whistleblowing experiment. We use a multi-player asymmetric information ultimatum game where only the proposer and a subset of the responders (the information insiders) know the size of a pot that the proposer distributes among information insiders and outsiders. Insiders have a clear moneta...

In this paper, we consider conspicuous consumption in a model in which individuals compare themselves to their social network neighbors in terms of the amount of a status good purchased. Individuals are heterogeneous with respect to income and can change their network links based on utility considerations. We study the impact of income inequality a...

We experimentally study the positional concerns of individuals embedded in social networks. In the game, individuals compete for positional advantage with their direct neighbors by purchasing a positional good. The Nash equilibrium consumption is determined by the Katz-Bonacich centrality of the individuals' network positions, while the efficient o...

We study the impact of network homophily on labor market outcomes in a search and matching model with two job search channels: the formal market and social contacts. There are two worker types: low‐skilled and high‐skilled workers. The homophily level determines whether the referral networks of the two types are mixed or segregated from each other....

We study how differences in interpersonal skills lead to inequality among workers when social connections are endogenously formed and workers find jobs through their contacts. We show that the equilibrium network structure is very unequal in terms of links and access to jobs. The equilibrium network is not socially optimal because workers impose ne...

Empirical descriptions and studies suggest that generally depositors observe a sample of previous decisions before deciding if to keep their funds deposited or to withdraw them. These observed decisions may exhibit different degrees of correlation across depositors. In our model depositors decide sequentially and are assumed to follow the law of sm...

S1_File.7z contains the program code of all simulations in this paper. The simulations are programmed in Repast 3, an agent-based modeling toolkit available at http://repast.sourceforge.net/repast3/. To run the program, one needs a Java Builder, such as Eclipse (available at https://eclipse.org/). After downloading these two programs, a new Java pr...

Empirical descriptions and studies suggest that generally depositors observe a sample of previous decisions before deciding if to keep their funds deposited or to withdraw them. These observed decisions may exhibit different degrees of correlation across depositors. In our model depositors are assumed to follow the law of small numbers in the sense...

Skill-biased technological change has been shown to lead to increasing inequality in wages and employment opportunities between high school and college graduates. Using the European Community Household Panel database, I document another aspect of inequality: the fraction of skill mismatched workers is much higher for high school than for college gr...

The interactions between on-the-job search and finding a job through social contacts are investigated in a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides search model with heterogeneous wages. Workers may find a job through their social contacts and on the formal market. The presence of social contacts increases the overall welfare in society as it rises the number...

We study a dynamic process where agents in a network interact in a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The network not only mediates interactions, but also information: agents learn from their own experience and that of their neighbors in the network about the past behavior of others. Each agent can only memorize the last h periods. Evolution selects among three p...

In this paper we study a dynamic process where agents in a network interact in a Prisoner's Dilemma. The probability for two agents to inter-act decreases with their distance in the network. The network not only mediates interactions, but also information: Agents learn from their own experience and that of their direct neighbors about the history o...

In this paper we deal with the question whether using social contacts or "formal" methods (such as application to advertisements) results in higher expected wage for a worker searching for job. Empirically, this question has produced contradictory evidences. In our model we show that one feature of the arrival process of new offers can be crucial f...