Welcome to the homepage for ECON 300, Social, Economic, and Financial Networks. Below you will find links to all class lectures once they are available, as well as some relevant videos and information I’ve created or pulled together from the Internet. If you have anything you think would be worth adding, please let me know. You can find me in my office on: Tuesday 12:30pm-3:00pm; Thursday 12:30pm-3:00pm; and online Wednesday between 2pm-3pm. Office hours are occasionally rescheduled due to conflicts. Please try to make an appointment before coming by.

Syllabus

Books

Christakis, Nicholas A. and James H. Fowler. 2011. “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives-How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do.” Paperback. Back Bay Books: New York. (ISBN 0316036137)

Easley, David and Jon Kleinberg. 2010. “Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World.” Cambridge University Press: New York. (ISBN 9780521195331)

Kadushin, Charles. 2012. “Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts, and Findings.” Oxford University Press: New York. (ISBN 9780195379471)

Watts, Duncan J. 2003. “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age.” W.W. Norton & Company: New York. (ISBN9780393325423)

Lectures

Material for each lecture and quiz will be listed below.

Lecture 1: Introduction (and now try this - Lecture 1 Papers "pw")

• Christakis & Fowler (3-32): In the Thick of It
• Kadushin (3-12): Introduction
• Watts (13-42): The Connected Age
• Milgram: "The Small-World Problem" (1967)
• Travers & Milgram: An Experimental Study of the Small-World Problem (1969)
• Granovetter: The Strength of Weak Ties (1973)
• Mathematica: Exercise Notes

Lecture 2: What does this have to do with economics?

• Watts (43-68):The Origins of "New" Science
• Kirman: "Whom or What Does the Representative Agent Represent?" (1992)
• Hartley: "The Orgins of the Representative Agent" (1996)
• Tesfatsion: "Introductory Notes on Rational Expectations" (2016)
• Williamson: "Notes on Macroeconomic Theory" (1999)
• Romer: "The Trouble with Macroeconomics" (2016), An update

Lecture 3: Small Worlds ("pw")

• Watts (69-100): Small Worlds
• Kadushin (108-134): The Small World, Circles, and Communities
• Easley and Kleinberg (Ch 20): The Small-World Phenomenon
• Watts: "Network Dynamics and the Small-World Phenomenon" (1999) - ?? model
• Newman: "Models of the Small World" (2000)
  • Kogut & Walker: "The Small World of Germany and the Duration of National Networks" (2001)
• Parker on Methodological Individualism v. Methodological Holism
• Watts-Strogatz Matlab code - put in your working directory

Lecture 4: Love, Health, and Disease ("pw")

• Probability for Small Worlds/Scale-Free (must login to Dropbox)
  • Probability Distributions - a story on Power Laws from Mandelbrot (powerlaws)
  • Barabasi and Albert: "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks" (1999)
  • Amaral et al.: "Classes of Small World Networks" (2000)
• Christakis and Fowler (61-134): Love the One You're With & This Hurts Me as Much as it Hurts You
• Watts (162-194): Epidemics and Failures - Also (101-129) Beyond the Small World
  • Easley and Kleinberg (Ch 21): Epidemics - up through 21.3 SIR Model

Relative standing

• Solnick and Hemenway: "Is more always better?: A survey on positional concerns" (1998)

Mating

• Jin et al.: "Preliminary Evidence Regarding the Hypothesis That the Sex Ratio at Sexual Maturity May Affect Longevity in Men" (2010)
• Greenwood et al.: "Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality"
  • Economist: "Sex, brains, and inequality" (2014)
  • Brookings: "Opposites Don't Attract: Assortative Mating and Social Mobility" (2014)
• Angrist: "How do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation" (2002)

Obesity

• Christakis and Fowler: "The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network Over 32 Years" (2007)
• Andersson: "Desire for Weight Loss, Weight-Related Social Contact, and Body Mass Outcomes" (2016)
  • NYT: Are Your Friends Making You Fat?

Lecture 5: Economics & Finance: Part I ("pw")

Lecture 6: Economics & Finance: Part II ("pw") same readings

General Reading

• Christakis and Fowler (135-171): The Buck Stops Here
  • Three Ways to Stop a Bank Run (podcast by Planet Money)
• Watts (195-219): Decisions, Delusions, and the Madness of Crowds and (220-252) Thresholds, Cascades, and Predictability
• Kadushin (135-161): Networks, Influence, and Diffusion
• Cull et al. (2009): Microfinance Meets the Market (free access)
  • Brock-New Yorker: Millions for Millions (free access)

Minsky

• Cassidy (Ch 16 from How Markets Fail) - Hyman Minsky and Ponzi Finance ("pw")
• Mandelbrot (Ch 1 & 2 from The Misbehavior of Markets) - Risk, Ruin, and Reward and By the Toss of a Coin or the Flight of an Arrow ("pw")
  • Mandelbrot helps explain power laws and Cauchy distributions

Bitcoin & Blockchain

• JEP - Bohme et al. (2015) Bitcoin: Economics, Technology, and Governance(free access)
• An Introduction to Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology
• PWC on Blockchain in the Financial Services Industry
• IBM on the Basics of Blockchain
• WEF on "Beyond Bitcoin"

Bubbles & Herding

• Shiller on Keynes Beauty Contest
  • Shiller:Conversation, Information, and Herd Behavior("pw")
  • Banerjee:A Simple Model of Herd Behavior("pw")

Lecture 7: Management & Production ("pw") same readings

General Reading

• Watts (253-289): Innovation, Adaptation, and Recovery
• Kadushin (90-107): Organizations and Networks
• Surowicki (192-223): The Wisdom of Crowds (The Company: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss?) ("pw")

Firm Structure

• Coase: The Nature of the Firm ("pw")
• Williamson: The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach ("pw")
• Freeman, Blasi, Kruse: Introduction to "Shared Capitalism at Work: Employee Ownership, Profit and Gain Sharing, and Broad-based Stock Options" ("pw")

Technology Adoption

• Anderson: Digital divide persists even as lower-income Americans make gains in tech adoption
• McGrath: The Pace of Technology Adoption is Speeding Up

Lecture 8: Financial Networks ("pw")

General Reading

• McConnell, Brue, and Flynn on "Money Creation" Read this first!

Banking Networks

• Allen & Gale "Financial Contagion"
• Babus "Formation of Financial Networks"
• Boss et al. "Network Topology of the Interbank Market"
• Bech and Atalay "The Topology of the Federal Funds Market"
• Soramaki et al. "Topology of Interbank Payment Flows"

Systemic Risk and Contagion

• Battiston & Caldarelli "Systemic Risk in Financial Networks"
• Glasserman & Young "Contagion in Financial Networks"
• Laeven & Valencia "Systemic Banking Crises Database: An Update"
• Neveu "A Survey of Network-Based Analysis and Systemic Risk Measurement"

Lecture 9: Contagion ("pw")