Vortrag von Prof. Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiméne, Universidad de Málaga, im BERG-Research Seminar am 08.12.25

Das Institut für VWL freut sich ankündigen zu k?nnen, dass Prof. Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiméne, Universidad de Málaga, innerhalb des BERG-Research Seminar einen Vortrag zum Thema

“Tolerance and polarization: The role of popularity networks"

halten wird.

Termin ist Montag, der 08. Dezember 2025, von 14.00h (s.t.) – 16.00h in Raum FG1/00.08

Individuals (political parties) often differ in their identities (ideologies), i.e., the behaviors they consider ideal. Nevertheless, in order to be accepted by others they must compromise, i.e, choose costly actions to get closer to others’ ideal values. Based on the paper by Genicot (2022) on tolerance and compromise we construct a two-stage model in which agents first choose actions and secondly, a pairwise stable network forms. The novelty of our approach is that tolerance levels depend endogenously on the degree of agents in the network. In particular, the more popular an individual is the more she/he is tolerated by others. Assuming uniformly distributed identities and optimistic individuals (i.e., no coordination failure in the link formation stage), we characterize a family of two distinct network structures in equilibrium: lattices and bridges. Following the polarization measure introduced by Esteban et al. (2007) we show that, in equilibrium, there is co-existence of cohesive and polarized societies depending on the identity and number of leaders (versus followers). Thus, ex ante identical societies could exhibit substantially different polarization levels due to the endogeneity of popularity.