Presenter: Shuchita jain(GE), Urvashi tandon(GE), Raamasrinivas (GE) | Mentor: Sonal barve( EE)
Networks pervade our social and economic lives. It affects how we form friendships, political alliances or trade partnerships as well as how we make decisions to buy or save, avail education or apply for employment. Networks influence our behaviour and our behaviour in turn influences network. Therefore this presentation explains process of Network formation viz. Random and Strategic and focuses mainly on the strategic formation of networks. It covers various aspects of optimality and explains different strategic interactions like games of substitutes and games of complements based on game-theoretic reasoning. Finally, the significance and influence of the position that a person holds in a network is explained through a ‘savings-monitor’ study in India, which links savers (people in a village) to monitors (other people in the village) who hold heterogeneous positions in the village network and observers the change in savings behaviour of savers. There are barriers (practical costs such as getting a true answer to the questions in primary survey) to conducting experiments so one can model a given problem through social and economic networks that the involved agents/parties possess.
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