Complex Social Networks

by Fernando Vega-Redondo

• ISBN13: 9780521857406
• ISBN10: 0521857406
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The book provides a systematic and self-contained account of the fast-developing theory of complex social networks. Social networks are central to the understanding of most socio-economic phenomena in the modern world. The classical approach to studying them relies on a methodology that abstracts from their size and complexity. In contrast, the approach taken in this book keeps complexity at the core, whilst integrating it with the incentive considerations that are preeminent in traditional economic analysis. The treatment starts with a detailed discussion of the basic models that act as 'benchmarks' for the complex-network literature: random networks, small worlds, and scale-free networks, before studying three different forces that underlie almost all network phenomena in social contexts: diffusion, search, and play. Finally, these forces are combined into a unified framework that is brought to bear on the issue of network formation and the coevolution of agents' behaviour and their pattern of interaction.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Complex networks: basic theory

Epidemic diffusion

Neighborhood effects in diffusion and play

Searching in social networks

Search, diffusion, and play in coevolving networks

Afterword

Generating functions

The Ising model

Mean-field theory

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