Control and spread of contagion in networks with global effects

John Higgins and Tarun Sabarwal
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John Higgins: Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA

No 202213, WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS from University of Kansas, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study proliferation of an action in binary action network coordination games that are generalized to include global effects. This captures important aspects of proliferation of a particular action or narrative in online social networks, providing a basis to understand their impact on societal outcomes. Our model naturally captures complementarities among starting sets, network resilience, and global effects, and highlights interdependence in channels through which contagion spreads. We present new, natural, computationally tractable, and efficient algorithms to define and compute equilibrium objects that facilitate the general study of contagion in networks and prove their theoretical properties. Our algorithms are easy to implement and help to quantify relationships previously inaccessible due to computational intractability. Using these algorithms, we study the spread of contagion in scale-free networks with 1,000 players using millions of Monte Carlo simulations. Our analysis provides quantitative and qualitative insight into the design of policies to control or spread contagion in networks. The scope of application is enlarged given the many other situations across different fields that may be modeled using this framework.

Keywords: Network games; coordination games; contagion; algorithmic computation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 C72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2022-04, Revised 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-gth and nep-net
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Related works:
Journal Article: Control and spread of contagion in networks with global effects (2023)
Working Paper: Control and spread of contagion in networks with global effects (2022)
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