In this chapter, I provide a broad level overview of the economics literature on economic and social networks. The plan is to examine the evolution of that literature, and in doing so to provide an idea of the approaches that have been taken and the perspective from which networks have been analyzed. Given the objectives of this volume, I am not attempting to provide a detailed description of what has been asked and answered by the literature,1 but rather to examine what economists might hope to gain from the analysis, how their paradigm has influenced their approach and the questions that they have tended to ask, and some examples of the research. The discussion is aimed at a general audience, with no presumption of any familiarity with the economics literature.
