Efficiency of network structures: The needle in the haystack

Nicolas Carayol (), Pascale ROUX (ADIS, BETA) and Murat Yildizoglu ()

Cahiers du GRES from Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales

Abstract: The modelling of networks formation has recently became the object of an increasing interest in economics. One of the important issues raised in this literature is the one of networks efficiency. Nevertheless, for non trivial payoff functions, searching for efficient network structures turns out to be a very difficult analytical problem as well as a huge computational task, even for a relatively small number of agents. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using genetic algorithms (GA) techniques for identifying efficient network structures, because the GA have proved their power as a tool for solving complex optimization problems. The robustness of this method in predicting optimal network structures is tested on two simple stylized models introduced by Jackson and Wolinski (1996), for which the efficient networks are known over the whole state space of parameter values.

Keywords: Networks; Optimal network structure; Efficiency; Genetic Algorithms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D85 C61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written 2005
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://beagle.u-bordeaux4.fr/gres/publications/2005/2005-06.pdf (application/pdf)

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

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:grs:wpegrs:2005-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers du GRES from Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Vincent Frigant ().