Online Network Formation Among Students During COVID-19: Analysing Path Dependency in a Natural Experimental Setting

Abstract

The onset of COVID-19 in 2020 led to the closure of educational institutions and a shift to online teaching in India. It provides a natural experiment setting in which to examine the formation of endogenous ties among students and analyses the path-dependent nature of such a process. Information on sources of academic assistance was collected from members of two groups of students enrolled in the postgraduate course of the Economics Department of an Indian University using Google forms. The information was analysed using standard measures employed in social network analysis, such as sociograms, centrality measures, and homophily index. We show that, contrary to expectations, inheriting ties can constrain actors from forming ties that optimize outcomes. JEL Codes: D85, I20