Impact of Utilities on the Structures of Stable Networks with Ordered Group Partitioning

Ping Sun () and Elena Parilina ()
Additional contact information
Ping Sun: Saint Petersburg State University
Elena Parilina: Saint Petersburg State University

Dynamic Games and Applications, 2022, vol. 12, issue 4, No 7, 1162 pages

Abstract: Abstract This paper considers a society partitioned into ordered groups and examines the stable networks that players form. Four utility functions combining benefits and costs from network connections are introduced. The utilities significantly influence players’ incentives in the formation of links and, consequently, network structure. Costs are affected by a given partition in one of two different ways: (i) a link’s cost depends only on the distance between the types of groups players belong to (the larger the distance, the larger the cost), and (ii) cost is not affected only by distance but also by the composition of a player’s neighborhood (the more members of a group the player has in her neighborhood, the less the average cost of a link is within this group). We observe that a player may prefer linking with players in other groups with a higher average link cost and reject linking with players in her own group when the second type of costs is applied. This never occurs with the first type of costs. We examine when specific network structures (i.e., empty network, complete network, minimal and minimally connected network, inner star and inner complete network) are pairwise stable with different utility functions. Stable networks regarding a special class of partitions with a unique large group and many individual players are also examined.

Keywords: Stable network; Group partitioning; Closeness degree; Group ratio; Inner star network; Inner complete network; 91A43; 91B69; 91B14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13235-022-00429-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:dyngam:v:12:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s13235-022-00429-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13235

DOI: 10.1007/s13235-022-00429-z

Access Statistics for this article

Dynamic Games and Applications is currently edited by Georges Zaccour

More articles in Dynamic Games and Applications from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().