社群網路 Social Networks, 2022 Fall

Introduction

The past decade has seen a growing interest in the complex "connectedness" of modern society. At the heart of this fascination is the idea of a network. How we make decisions to adopt a new idea, to invest by buying/selling security stocks, or even to vote for a specific campaign candidate is influenced by the people that we are linked with. How people behave is affected by incentives and by their expectations about the behaviors of the people with whom they are linked. In this course the students will be exposed to an interdisciplinary body of knowledge in sciences, engineering, social sciences, economics, business, political science and medical health studies. The goal of this course is to show how social network is applied to the study of economics, political science, and medical health study.

Textbook

David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, “Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World,” Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Syllabus

1. Graph theory and social networks

   Graph
   Strong and weak ties
   Networks in their surrounding contexts Structural balance

2. Game theory

   Games
   Auctions

3. Markets and strategic interaction in networks

   Matching markets
   Bargaining and power in networks

4. Network dynamics: population models

   Information cascades
   Power laws and rich-get-richer phenomena

5. Network dynamics: structural models

   Cascade behavior in networks
   The small-world phenomena
   Epidemics

6. Institutions and aggregate behavior

   Markets and information