9709237 Casella Studies show that not only Overseas Chinese but also many other ethnic groups living outside their countries of origin create formal or informal "societies" to which coethnic business people from both the host countries and the mother country have access. The main purpose of these societies is to provide information about business opportunities and business contracts. The operation and economic importance of coethnic societies has been especially well documented for the special case of trade between countries hosting recent immigrants and these immigrants' countries of origin. The purpose of this research project is to build a general equilibrium model of trade where anonymous markets and networks of personal contacts interact, and to test the empirical implications that can be drawn from the model. The project adds to the growing research on integrating network and market models of the economy. Although economists and other social scientists believe that both forms of organizations play an important role in allocating economic resources, very few analyses treat explicitly how they interact. ??
