1 CENTRALITY AND INVESTMENT STRATEGIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE INDUSTRIALIZATION IN MID-19 TH CENTURY CATALONIA 1 Marc Badia-Miró Centre d’Estudis Antoni de Capmany – Xarxa de Referència en Economia i Polítiques Públiques – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Estudis d’Economia i Empresa. Av. Tibidabo, 39-43. 08035. Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: mbmiro@uoc.edu Yolanda Blasco-Martel Centre d’Estudis Antoni de Capmany – Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales (ADE) Inmaculada 22, 08017, Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: yblasco@cir.uic.es Sergi Lozano ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, UNO D11, Universitätstr. 41, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. E-mail: slozano@ethz.ch Raimon Soler Centre d’Estudis Antoni de Capmany – Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat de Ciències Econòmiques i Empresarials. Av. Diagonal 640, 08040, Barcelona. Spain. E-mail: raimonsoler@ub.edu Abstract We apply social networks analysis to the study of an important database on investment and companies’ share in Catalonia (Spain) of the 19 th century. In contrast with most of the existing related literature, usually addressing power relationships across administration boards, we focus on the structure of interactions among individual investors and firms. Centrality analysis uncovers interesting roles played by certain economic sectors (e.g. textile and financial). Furthermore, the diverse composition (in terms of economic activity) of communities in the network (subgroups more densely connected internally than with the rest of the network) reveals a high investment diversification, which nicely agrees with a known characteristic of traditional Catalan business strategies. Keywords Social networks analysis, investment strategies, Barcelona, 19 th century, centrality, structural communities. 1 The authors appreciate the comments received during the Primeras Jornadas Historia Empresarial: España y Europa organized by the Centre d´Estudis en Economia i Història Econòmica Antoni de Capmany. We are also grateful for the collaboration offered by the Economic History Department of the University of Barcelona for facilitating the use of their historical database used in this paper. Finally, we appreciate the comments of Carles Sudrià and Paloma Fernández, and an anonymous referee who helped us to improve the article. This paper was made possible with the financial support of the projects SEJ2005 - 02498 / ECON y SEJ 2005 - 02869 / ECON. All errors are our responsibility.