Diffusion in countably infinite networks

Michel Grabisch, Agnieszka Rusinowska and Xavier Venel ()
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Xavier Venel: Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, https://sites.google.com/site/xaviervenelsite/home

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: We investigate the phenomenon of diffusion in a countably infinite society of individuals interacting with their neighbors. At a given time, each individual is either active (i.e., has the status or opinion 1) or inactive (i.e., has the status or opinion 0). The configuration of the society describes active and interactive individuals. The diffusion mechanism is based on an aggregation function, which leads to a Markov process with an uncountable set of states, requiring the involvement of s-fields. We focus on two types of aggregation functions - strict, and Boolean. We determine absorbing, transient, and irreducible sets under strict aggregation functions. We shhow that segregation of the society cannot happen, and its state evolves towards a mixture of infinitely many active and infinitely many inactive agents. In our analysis, we mainly focus on the network structure. We distinguish networks with a blinker (periodic class of period 2) and those without. Ø-irreducibility is obtained at the price of a richness assumption of the network, meaning that it should contain infinitely many complex stars and have enough space for storing local configurations. When considering Boolean aggregation functions, the diffusion process becomes deterministic, and the contagion model of Morris (2000) can be seen as a particular case of our framework with aggregation functions. In this case, consensus and non trivial absorbing states as well as cycles can exist

Keywords: diffusion; countable network; aggregation function; absorbing set; transiet set; irreducible set (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 D7 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2019-07
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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ftp://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2019/19017.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Diffusion in countably infinite networks (2019)
Working Paper: Diffusion in countably infinite networks (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:19017

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