Notes on the Exponential Random Graph Model: a contribution to the critique of interdisciplinarity

Paolo Dini

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: A tutorial discussion is presented about the Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) of Social Network Analysis (SNA). The intended audience is post-graduate students and researchers in social science who are curious to understand better where quantitative models come from, for a more effective integration with qualitative methodologies. The discussion is traced back to Jaynes’s distinction between objective and subjective interpretations of probability, where the former emphasizes likelihood of outcomes based on frequency distributions, while the latter emphasizes our incomplete knowledge or uncertainty about the outcome. Although within information theory both views lead to the same functional form for information entropy, when applying these concepts to graph theory the paper shows that the subjective view leads to the ERGM, while the objective view yields a different functional form for the ‘graph entropy’. It is hoped that the critical perspective on interdisciplinarity developed throughout the paper lends credibility and insight to the conclusion that the subjective view of graph entropy is justified as an optimization principle for the most likely distribution of different graph metrics.

JEL-codes: C1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2021-12-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112951/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:112951

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().