April 23 (Thursday) 10:00-11:00, room C.510 (new building, 5th floor)
Anastas Tenev (Corvinus University of Budapest)
Bridging network gaps under limited perception
We consider a model of network formation in which agents benefit from intermediation, i.e. when they fill a “structural hole” in the network and are the only bridge between agents who would otherwise not be connected. Their payoffs depend proportionally on their frequency as intermediaries. We analyze two types of payoffs: global, based on the intermediation in the whole network; and local, based on the number of redundant contacts among one’s own neighbors. In case agents’ payoffs are only global, the pairwise stable networks are connected and have at most one (central) agent with nonzero payoff. When payoffs are some combination of local and global, all (except one) agents who perceive themselves as central in their local network are not central at the global level.
The talk is based on joint work with Noémie Cabau.