Influence networks

Dunia Lopez-Pintado (dlopez@upo.es)
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Dunia Lopez-Pintado: Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics, Sevilla, Spain; Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

No 2010083, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: Some behaviors, ideas or technologies spread and become persistent in society, whereas others vanish. This paper analyzes the role of social influence in determining such distinct collective outcomes. Agents are assumed to acquire information from others through a certain sampling process that generates an influence network, and they use simple rules to decide whether to adopt or not depending on the observed sample. We characterize, as a function of the primitives of the model, the diffusion threshold (i.e., the spreading rate above which the adoption of the new behavior becomes persistent in the population) and the endemic state (i.e., the fraction of adopters in the stationary state of the dynamics). We find that the new behavior will easily spread in the population if there is a high correlation between how influential (visible) and how easily influenced an agent is, which is determined by the sampling process and the adoption rule. We also analyze how the density and variance of the out-degree distribution affect the diffusion threshold and the endemic state.

Keywords: social influence; networks; diffusion threshold; endemic state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C73 L14 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gth, nep-mic, nep-net and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2010083

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