Economics of Innovation and New Technology

Building on the concept of homophily motivated by the scholarship of Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954), a rich theoretical foundation for the study of the topic has developed within the literature (e.g., Baccara and Yariv, 2013; Golub and Jackson, 2012; Melguizo, 2019; Polanski and Vega-Redondo, 2023; Zuckerman, 2024). The SI aims at expanding the empirical literature on homophilic relationships  that addresses a variety of important economic and social situations (e.g., Bednar et al., 2021; Mele, 2022; Qin et al., 2022; Zeltzer, 2022).  The empirical application of so-called homophily theory to the economics of innovative behavior remains limited. The purpose of this special issue is to expand that empirical literature in an effort to document the connection between homophilic relationships and various dimensions of innovative behavior.

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