Recent Developments in the Analysis of Social and Economic Networks

The lectures provided an introduction to a set of analytic tools for modeling both network formation and how network structure affects individual behavior. The first part included an overview of some of the basic random graph, statistical, and game theoretic models of network formation and how such models can be used to understand observed social-network phenomena. The second part of the lectures discussed some issues surrounding the statistical estimation of network models. The third part of the lectures provided an introduction to a series of interactive models of behavior as dependent on network structure: contagion, diffusion, and learning, including some discussion of peer effects.

Matthew Jackson is the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University.