Socio-Economic NEtworks and Coalitions Analysis

The Research Center SENECA has the objective of promoting, producing and disseminating high level academic research on the theoretical, empirical and policy aspects of social and economic networks and groups. Such entities appear in a large number of relevant problems of economics, sociology and politics, and a deep understanding of their formation and functioning is basic to any social theory. Groups and coalitions are key elements of problems in which coordination of individual actions is needed to achieve optimal use of scarse resources, including international environmental policy, public goods production, economic unions, trade blocks, custom areas, etc… Networks are important in social and diplomatic relations, in that they shape the flows of information and the patterns of interaction of social actors. Labor market and trade networks are some of the economic examples that have been recently studied, among many others. Also, social networks are important in shaping interpersonal relations, which, in turns, determine the welfare of economic agents in heterogeneous environments. Here below are listed and briefly summarized a few lines of research on which the members of the SENECA research center are currently working, and along which the activity of the center will develop.

Environmental Agreements. Coalition Theory aims at describing the incentives of groups of countries to coordinate emission policies, and at providing policy instruments and recommendation for a self-sustaining international agreement

Social Networks: integration, segregation and colonization. The quantitative (or structural) analysis of social networks aims at describing the multilevel network of social relations, and at studying some crucial characteristics of such networks, that are thought to affect agents welfare. Special emphasis will be on racial and religious integration and on linguistic colonization.

Network formation models. The theory of network formation aim at building rational choice mathematical models that capture the main incentives and trade-offs of link formation in many economic environments.

Coalition formation models. This theory investigates how and why economic and social actors form groups, and what can be the equilibrium configuration of such groups and their welfare properties.

Experimental analysis of networks.

Information sharing and diffusion in networks. One of the most relevant aspects of networks is that welfare relevant information flow through the links. Agents may possess some information of economic fundamentals (including the shape of the network), and may agree to share some of this information with their neighbour before forming beliefs on such fundamentals. A growing literature is trying to model the complex interdependence of agents’ beliefs and how this depends on the network architecture.

Members

Fellows:

Sergio CURRARINI (Coordinator)
Carlo CARRARO

Associated Fellows:

Ginestra BIANCONI, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste
Mario EBOLI, Università di Pescara
Francesco FERI, University of Innsbruck
Luca DALL’ASTA, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste
Massimo MORELLI, Columbia University
Sonia OREFFICE, City University of New York
Paolo PIN, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste

Doctoral Students:

Javier DIAZ, Università di Venezia
Giacomo PASINI, Università di Venezia
Carmen MARCHIORI, London School of Economics

Master Students:

Maddalena FERRANNA

Institutional Partners

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)
Coalition Theory Network (CTN)



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