The Economics of Networks

This workshop focuses on economic models for the spread of (mis-)information and adoption of opinions or actions. It explores the role of learning, the effect of strategic agents, and the impact of social structure and platform mediation. In these strategic models, agents engage in (typically Bayesian) reasoning, update beliefs and choose actions based on their observations of their neighbors’ beliefs or actions, and then receive rewards based on the state of the world. For example, the state of the world might be the efficacy of two different vaccines. Agents select among the vaccines based on their initial beliefs and the choices of their neighbors. Their pay-off is then correlated with the efficacy of the vaccine they selected. Which vaccines agents select, or indeed whether they choose to be vaccinated at all, depends not only on who received vaccines initially, but also on who chooses to vaccinate subsequently and whether they encourage their friends to vaccinate. The workshop will bring together researchers from computer science, economics, and operations research to study the impact of strategic choices, and plausible interventions, on outcomes.