Mutual Admiration Clubs

Abstract

"This article proposes a theory of group formation based on the motive to seek informed opinion. Because an individual evaluates whether others are informed or not using his own priors, he identifies people with similar beliefs to be more informed than those with different beliefs. The result is an equilibrium in which like-minded individuals self-select into distinct groups, with members of each group believing that their own group is superior." ("JEL" D71, D81, D83, D85) Copyright (c) 2009 Western Economic Association International.

Clique and elite: inter-organizational knowledge sharing across five star hotels in the Saudi Arabian religious tourism and hospitality industry

“…This information serves to not only gain ideas for improvement but also determine who their competitors really are, and their rankings in relation to one another, thereby cementing their elite status. This finding closely relates to Suen’s (2010) group formation model, which posits that these organizations prefer to interact with each other rather than with less similar organizations because they trust each other to know their industry and market better than any outside organization.…”

Religious Homophily in a Secular Country: Evidence From a Voting Game in France

“…First, scholars have shown that homophily may constitute a threat to social cohesion. It generates segregation (Centola et al ; Suen ), inequality (Fernández and Rogerson ), and compromises the ability of a society to reach a consensus on major issues (Golub and Jackson ). Understanding which basic characteristics are significantly correlated with homophily is thus a prerequisite to limiting homophily's potential deleterious social effects.…”

The Power of Whispers: A Theory of Rumor, Communication, and Revolution*

“…Gentzkow and Shapiro () show that individuals tend to believe that a news source is of high quality if it conforms to their prior expectations. Also, see Suen () for a model with similar features.…”