1 February 2011

Post date: Feb 1, 2011 5:28:20 PM

Elisabeth led the discussion by bringing a problem to the group. How should we model social networks in which some kind of shock (e.g., a breakup in a group of friends, a diplomatic breakdown in a trading network) rapidly leads to a reorganization of the network into two separate factions? The main focus was on what agent and network attributes would need to be included in the model to adequately capture this sort of situation. Possible sources of empirical data included historical records of military and diplomatic conflicts, records of strategic voting in political contexts, and the generation of new data by setting up an "experimental economics" version of the situation.