Finite population noncooperative games with linear-quadratic utilities, where each player decides how much action she exerts, can be interpreted as a network game with local payoff complementarities, together with a globally uniform payoff substitutability component and an own-concavity effect. For these games, the Nash equilibrium action of each player is proportional to her Bonacich centrality in the network of local complementarities, thus establishing a bridge with the sociology literature on social networks. This Bonacich-Nash linkage implies that aggregate equilibrium increases with network size and density. We then analyze a policy that consists of targeting the key player, that is, the player who, once removed, leads to the optimal change in aggregate activity. We provide a geometric characterization of the key player identified with an intercentrality measure, which takes into account both a player's centrality and her contribution to the centrality of the others. Copyright The Econometric Society 2006.
Delinquents are embedded in a network of relationships. Each delinquent decides in a non‐cooperative way how much delinquency effort he will exert. We characterize the Nash equilibrium and derive an optimal enforcement policy, called the key‐player policy. We then extend our characterization of optimal single player network removal to optimal group removal, the key group. We also characterize and derive a policy that targets links rather than players. Finally, we endogenize the network connecting delinquents by allowing players to join the labor market instead of committing delinquent offenses. The key‐player policy turns out to be much more complex because it depends on wages and on the structure of the network. (JEL: A14, C72, K42, L14)
Zenou for very fruitful discussions. Two anonymous referees helped us to improve the paper significantly. We also thank the seminar/conference participants at ASSET (Ali- We propose an intuitive way of how to measure segregation in social and spatial networks. Using random walks, we define the segregation index as the probability that an individual meets an individual from the same social group. The segregation index is a generalization of the isolation index and a homophily index introduced in Currarini et al. (2009), and it has a closedform relation to PageRank that facilitates its computation. We also show that the Spectral Segregation Index proposed by Echenique and Fryer (2007) is not continuous with respect to the network structure. Finally, we apply the measure to Spanish census data and to citations data from Economics, and rationalize the index as the equilibrium outmode of a game.
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