ECON207B

ECON207B was taught by Adam Szeidl and Shachar Kariv in the Spring of 2010. I auditted this class.

Course Website

The course website was [1].

Course Materials

There was a useful syllabus.

Lecture slides:

• Lecture 1
• Lecture 2
• Lecture 3
• Lecture 4
• Lectures 5&6
• Lecture 7
• Lecture 8 did not have slides

Student Presentations

All slides posted here are (C) copyright their respective authors. Please contact the authors before using them in any fashion.

Games played on networks

Presentation by Matt Leister (slides)

• Calvo-Armengol A., E. Patacchini and Y. Zenou (2009), “Peer E¤ects and Social Networks in Education,”Review of Economic Studies 76, 1239-1267.
• Galeotti, Goyal, Jackson, Vega-Redondo and Yariv (2010): Network Games, The Review of Economic Studies , 77 (1) , pp. 218244.

Strategic network formation

Presentation by Michele Muller (slides)

• Jackson and Wolinsky (1996): A Strategic Model of Social and Economic Networks, Journal of Economic Theory , 71 (1) , pp. 44-74.
• Christakis, N.A. and Fowler, J.H. and Imbens, G.W. and Kalyanaraman, K. (2010), "An empirical model for strategic network formation", National Bureau of Economic Research

Strategic network formation

Presentation by Marco Alexander Schwarz (slides)

• Bala and Goyal (2000): A Noncooperative Model of Network Formation, Econometrica, 68 (5) , pp. 1181–1229.
• Galeotti and Goyal (2010): The Law of the Few, American Economic Review.

Statistical network formation

Presentation by James (slides)

• Jackson and Rogers (2007): Meeting Strangers and Friends of Friends: How Random are Socially Generated Networks?, American Economic Review 97, pp. 890-915.
• Currarini, Jackson and Pin (2009): An Economic Model of Friendship: Homophily, Minorities and Segregation, Econometrica , 77 (4) , pp. 10031045.

Information aggregation in networks

Presentation by Junjie Zhou (slides)

• DeMarzo, Vayanos and Zwiebel (2003): Persuasion Bias, Social Influence and Unidimensional Opinions, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 118, pp. 909-968.
• Golub and Jackson (2010): Naive Learning in Social Networks: Convergence, Influence and the Wisdom of Crowds, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

Networks and labor markets

Presentation by Attila Lindner (slides)

• Calvo-Armengol and Jackson (2004): The E¤ects of Social Networks on Employment and Inequality, American Economic Review , 94 (3) , pp. 426-454
• Topa (2001): Social Interactions, Local Spillovers and Unemployment, Review of Economic Studies , 68 (2) , pp. 261-295
• Munshi (2003): Networks in the Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants in the US Labor Market, Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, pp. 549-599.

Favoritism and political connections

Presentation by Alisa Tazhitdinova (slides)

• Bramoulle, Y. and S. Goyal (2010), “Favoritism,”Working paper, Laval University and Cambridge.
• Khwaja, A., and A. Mian (2005). “Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent Provision in an Emerging Financial Market,”Quarterly Journal of Economics 120.

Financial networks

Presentation by Tarso Mori Madeira (slides)

• Allen, Franklin and Gale, DouglasM. [2000] “Financial Contagion,”Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 108, No. 1.
• Allen, Franklin, Ana Babus and Elena Carletti [2010] “Financial Connections and Systemic Risk,”Working paper, UPenn, Cambridge, EUI.

Financial networks

Presentation by Vladimir (slides)

• Caballero, Ricardo, and Alp Simsek [2010] “Complexity and Financial Panics,”working paper, MIT and Harvard.

Particularly Useful Papers

I found the following papers from the class particularly useful:

• Manski (1993): Identi…cation of Endogenous Social E¤ects: The Re‡ection Problem, Review of Economic Studies , 60 , pp. 531-542. (pdf)
• Sacerdote (2001): Peer E¤ects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 116 (2) , pp. 681-704 (pdf)

In addition, these paper from my own reading were highly relevant:

• Jackson, Matthew O. (2003), "A Survey of Models of Network Formation: Stability and Efficiency", in "Group Formation in Economics: Networks, Clubs, and Coalitions", edited by Gabrielle Demange and Myrna Wooders, Cambridge University Press (pdf)
• Ozsoylev, Han, Johan Walden, Deniz Yavuz, Recep Bildik (2011), “Investor Networks in the Stock Market”, Working Paper (pdf)

I also strongly recommend interested students to read:

• Roth, A.E. (1988), "The Shapley value: essays in honor of Lloyd S. Shapley", Cambridge Univ. Press.

(This should be available in your library. It provides the cooperative game theory foundations for modern network economics. And Roth writes an excellent foreword and chapter that will get you up to speed fast.)