Social environments were already present in the original Web vision, but nowadays are mainly available through Online Social Networks (OSNs), which are a real cultural phenomenon. However, their actual deployment is very heterogeneous, reflecting into different development choices and functional architectures. Such aspects, jointly with the intrinsic sharing of personal information, lead to sev...

The paper analyzes how social barriers to communication affect economy-wide productivity and factor accumulation. Using a dynamic model of an economy that includes a reproducible capital stock (physical or human) and effective labor, a negative relationship is shown to exist between social barriers to communication and total factor productivity (TFP), per capita consumption and reproducible cap...

Based on data from a survey of biological scientists at 125 American universities, this article explores how the commercialization of the university affects the problems academic scientists pursue and argues that this reorientation of scientific agendas results in a shift from science in the public interest to science for private goods. Drawing on perspectives from Bourdieu on how actors employ...

This paper reviews recent attempts to explain the generation of ‘social mobility and inequality in a market economy. It also discusses the interaction of mobility and the distribution of wealth with the process of capital accumulation. Any attempt at explaining intergenerational mobility as well as the endogenous generation of inequality must include uncertainty in individual incomes. This basi...

the main aim goal of this paper is estimating time series of social capital in iran. for this aim, first we have reviewed theoretical and empirical literature of social capital, and then we used fuzzy method for estimating time series of social capital. we used latent variable, because social capital is a qualify variable. crime and participation indexes are two related variables with social ca...

In a number of developing countries, an important part of the economy is informal both in terms of production and of social protection. In this paper we consider introducing a universal pension system in the formal sector. It is shown to have two main effects: first, it makes the formal sector more attractive to migration and second, it affects capital accumulation in a way which depends on the...

In recent times, the recognition of skilled migrants as agents of transformation and bridges for the circulation of knowledge and ideas between countries has gained importance within the migration and development nexus. While the latest research has been mostly aimed at understanding the magnitude, characteristics and impacts of skilled migration, policy options look for ways of encouraging pot...

The value of a social network is generally determined by its size and the connectivity of its nodes. But since some of the nodes may be fake ones and others that are dormant, the question of validating the node counts by statistical tests becomes important. In this paper we propose the use of the Benford’s distribution to check on the trustworthiness of the connectivity statistics. Our experime...

The Social Security program is almost certain to have a major influence on the Nation’s rate of capital accumulation. For most Americans, Social Security is the primary form of saving for retirement. As such, the high and increasing level of Social Security benefits can markedly reduce personal saving and private capital accumulation; the evidence reviewed below suggests that this does in fact ...

Sustainability is a global issue concerning future generations, but steps towards sustainable development must also be taken at the spatial scales of regions and at the temporal scales of individual lives. Different scales matter in social networks and in cultural realities, too. The fact that relatively small regions can dominate global markets for products based on continuous innovation point...