The Spread of Free-Riding Behavior in a Social Network

Lopez Pintado, Dunia

The Spread of Free-Riding Behavior in a Social Network

UFAE and IAE Working Papers from Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC)

Abstract: We study a model where agents, located in a social network, decide whether to exert effort or not in experimenting with a new technology (or acquiring a new skill, innovating, etc.). We assume that agents have strong incentives to free ride on their neighbors' effort decisions. In the static version of the model efforts are chosen simultaneously. In equilibrium, agents exerting effort are never connected with each other and all other agents are connected with at least one agent exerting effort. We propose a mean-field dynamics in which agents choose in each period the best response to the last period's decisions of their neighbors. We characterize the equilibrium of such a dynamics and show how the pattern of free riders in the network depends on properties of the connectivity distribution.

Keywords: free ride; independent set; local public good; mean field; social network. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C45 C73 D00 D83 D85 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2007-11-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Spread of Free-Riding Behavior in a Social Network (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aub:autbar:718.07

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