Магистратура 2025/2026

Сети: теория и приложения

Статус: Курс по выбору (Экономика и экономическая политика)

Кто читает: Департамент теоретической экономики

Когда читается: 2-й курс, 2 модуль

Охват аудитории: для своего кампуса

Преподаватели: Тетерятникова Мария Александровна

Язык: английский

Course Syllabus

Abstract

Networks are ubiquitous in our modern society. The World Wide Web that links us to the rest of the world is the most visible example. But it is only one of many networks in which we are situated. Our social life is organized around networks of friends and colleagues. These networks determine our information, influence our opinions, and shape our political attitudes. They also link us, often through weak but important ties, to everybody else. Economic and financial markets also look much more like networks than anonymous marketplaces. Firms interact with the same suppliers and customers and use web-like supply chains. Financial linkages, both among banks and between consumers, companies, and banks, also form a network over which funds flow and risks are shared; systemic risk in financial markets often results from the counter-party risks created within this financial network. Food chains, interacting biological systems and the spread and containment of epidemics like Covid-19 are some of the other natural and social phenomena that exhibit a marked networked structure. This course will introduce the tools for the study of networks. It will show how certain common principles permeate the functioning of these diverse networks and how the same issues related to robustness, fragility, and interlinkages arise in many different types of networks. More specifically, the course will be split into two parts. The first, larger part is a series of lectures on the analytic modelling of networks and games played on networks. The second part is presentations by students of the selected papers (the list of topics will be discussed in class). The first part of the course will begin with an overview of social and economic networks, and the embeddedness of economic activity. We then will examine how to describe and measure networks and discuss some empirical observations about network structure. Next, we will examine models of network formation: random network models and strategic formation models. After that we will take a long look at models of diffusion through networks, learning on networks, as well as models of how networks impact behavior (games played on networks and networked markets).