Evan Sadler

TUILES: Tuesday Informal Lunchtime Seminars Fall 2014

Tuesday, November 18th

KMC 8-170

Lunch will be available at 12:15 pm. The seminar begins at 12:30 pm.

“The Diffusion of Rival Information”

Evan Sadler

We study the spread of rival information through a social network. A piece of information loses value as more individuals learn it, but players derive a positive payoff from being first to share the information with neighbors. If there are either very few or very many opportunities to interact with neighbors, sharing occurs robustly in equilibrium. For moderate levels of interaction, there is a non-trivial tradeoff between the benefits of sharing and the lost value from further spread of the information. In general, equilibrium is non-unique, and increasing connectivity in the network may lead to less sharing. In a mean-field approximation to the model, we fully characterize the set of equilibria and relate associated outcomes to a contagion threshold.

Joint work with: Nicole Immorlica and Brendan Lucier