Economics of Networks

Syllabus

Plan

The plan is exact as to due dates of work from you, and a best guess of our progress through the material.

Announcements

April 6, 2023: There is no class meeting on Wednesday, April 12. Instead, students are required to attend the theory workshop presentation by Evan Sadler (L070 at 3:30pm).

Materials

• Jackson 2008 Ch. 1-3
• Goyal 2023 Ch. 1

Lectures

Lecture 1 (Mar. 28)

• Go over syllabus
• Discuss three vignettes. [notes]

Lecture 2 (Mar. 29)

• Continue discussing three vignettes
• DeGroot lecture, part 1 [notes]
  • The reading for this is Golub and Sadler (2016), 3.1.1, 3.1.2, 3.2 up to the end of 3.2.2
  • SS Section 1.4 and Chapter 4 (skip 4.2.3) provide basic background
  • Deeper technical background can be found in Carl D. Meyer’s Matrix Analysis and Applied Linear Algebra — see pdf of Chapter 8 for an extract of some of the essential material

Lecture 3: Math background (Apr 3)

• Selected topics from SS 1.2 and 1.4, as summarized in these rough notes

Lecture 4 (Apr 5)

• DeGroot lecture, part 2
• Perron-Frobenius theorem, basics of “general centrality theory”
• Read SS Ch. 4 and Golub and Sadler Section 3

Lecture 5 (Apr 10)

• Introduction to network formation

Lecture 5A (Apr 12)

• Sadler “Making a Swap: Network Formation with Increasing Marginal Costs”

Lecture 6 (Apr 17)

• Conclusion of network formation
• Introduction to linear-quadratic network games

Lecture 7 (Apr 19)

• Linear-quadratic network games: In-class lab

Lecture 8 (Apr 24)

• Student lectures
  • Abhijit Banerjee, Arun G Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo, Matthew O Jackson (REStud 2019). Using gossips to spread information: Theory and evidence from two randomized controlled trials [slides]
  • Stephen Morris (REStud 2000). Contagion. [slides]

Lecture 9 (Apr 26)

• Production networks

Lecture 10 (May 1)

• Production networks

Lecture 11 (May 3)

• Elliott and Golub (JPE 2019)
• Production networks

Lecture 12 (May 8)

• Platforms

Lecture 13 (May 10)

• Platforms (remaining material)
• Branching processes, introduction: Based on EK Ch 21, mainly 21.8.A
• Introduction to random graphs

Lecture 14 (Apr 15)

• Branching processes and random graphs: Grown-up theory

Lecture 15 (Apr 17)

• Wrapping up random graph theory
• Student presentations

Problem Sets

Problem set 1 [pdf] [tex]