An empirical model for strategic network formation
Nicholas Christakis,
James Fowler,
Guido Imbens and
Karthik Kalyanaraman
Additional contact information
Nicholas Christakis: Institute for Fiscal Studies
James Fowler: Institute for Fiscal Studies
No CWP16/10, CeMMAP working papers from Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Abstract:
We develop and analyze a tractable empirical model for strategic network formation that can be estimated with data from a single network at a single point in time. We model the network formation as a sequential process where in each period a single randomly selected pair of agents has the opportunity to form a link. Conditional on such an opportunity, a link will be formed if both agents view the link as beneficial to them. They base their decision on their own characateristics, the characteristics of the potential partner, and on features of the current state of the network, such as whether the the two potential partners already have friends in common. A key assumption is that agents do not take into account possible future changes to the network. This assumption avoids complications with the presence of multiple equilibria, and also greatly simplifies the computational burden of anlyzing these models. We use Bayesian markov-chain-monte-carlo methods to obtain draws from the posterior distribution of interest. We apply our methods to a social network of 669 high school students, with, on average, 4.6 friends. We then use the model to evaluate the effect of an alternative assignment to classes on the topology of the network.
Date: 2010-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ecm, nep-net and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (84)
Downloads: (external link)
http://cemmap.ifs.org.uk/wps/cwp1610.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to cemmap.ifs.org.uk:80 (No such host is known. )
Related works:
Working Paper: An Empirical Model for Strategic Network Formation (2010) 
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:ifs:cemmap:16/10
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CeMMAP working papers from Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emma Hyman ().