Network Games: Spotting Trendsetters and Bargaining with Middlemen

Network games provide a basic framework for studying the diffusion of new ideas or behaviors through a population. In these models, agents decide to adopt a new idea based on optimizing pay-off that depends on the adoption decisions of their neighbors in an underlying network. After introducing the model, we present results for two problems.

The first considers the problem of inferring early adopters or first movers given a snap shot of the adoption state at a given time. We present some results on solving this problem in what is known as the low temperature regime. We conclude the first part with a discussion on reducing the complexity of such inference problems for large networks.

The second considers a dynamic and decentralized market modeled by a non-cooperative networked bargaining game. Our goal is to study how the network structure of the market and the role of middlemen influence the market's efficiency and fairness. We introduce the concept of limit stationary equilibrium in a general trading network and use it to analyze how endogenous delay emerges in trade and how surplus is shared between sellers and buyers.