Section 2: Sorting and Peer Effects
We now jump directly into some models. We contrast two types of models that explain a single phenomenon, namely that people tend to live and interact with people who look, think, and act like themselves. After an introductory lecture, we cover famous models by Schelling and Granovetter that cover these phenomena. We follow those with a fun model about standing ovations that I wrote with my friend John Miller.
In this second section, I show a computational version of Schelling's Segregation Model using NetLogo. Netlogo is free software authored by Uri Wilensky or Northwestern University. I will be using NetLogo several times during the course. It can be downloaded here:
The Schelling Model that I use can be found by clicking on the "File" tab, then going to "Models Library". In the Models Library directory, click on the arrow next to the Social Science folder and then scroll down and click on the model called Segregation.
The readings for this section include some brief notes on Schelling's model and then the academic papers of Granovetter and Miller and Page. I'm not expecting you to read those papers from start to end, but I strongly encourage you to peruse them so that you can see how social scientists frame and interpret models.