Diffusion and contagion in networks with heterogeneous agents and homophily

Matthew Jackson and Dunia Lopez-Pintado
Additional contact information
Dunia Lopez-Pintado: Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain and Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

No 2012012, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: We study how a behavior (an idea, buying a product, having a disease, adopting a cultural fad or a technology) spreads among agents in an a social network that exhibits segregation or homophily (the tendency of agents to associate with others similar to themselves). Individuals are distinguished by their types (e.g., race, gender, age, wealth, religion, profession, etc.) which, together with biased interaction patterns, induce heterogeneous rates of adoption. We identify the conditions under which a behavior diffuses and becomes persistent in the population. These conditions relate to the level of homophily in a society, the underlying proclivities of various types for adoption or infection, as well as how each type interacts with its own type. In particular, we show that homophily can facilitate diffusion from a small initial seed of adopters.

Keywords: diffusion; homophily; segregation; social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C45 C70 C73 D83 D85 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-04-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2012.html (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Diffusion and contagion in networks with heterogeneous agents and homophily (2013)
Working Paper: Diffusion and contagion in networks with heterogeneous agents and homophily (2013)
Working Paper: Diffusion and contagion in networks with heterogeneous agents and homophily (2011)
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:cor:louvco:2012012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS ().