Social Network Formation and the Role of Social Groups: Evidence from Facebook

Please enable javascript in your browser.

Forouzandeh Shahraki, Ramin | 2017

743 Viewed

Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
Language: Farsi
Document No: 49733 (44)
University: Sharif University of Technology
Department: Management and Economics
Advisor(s): Madanizadeh, Ali; Rahmati, Mohammad Hossein
Abstract:
Social networks play an important role in people’s lives and have substantial economic outcomes. The role of referrals in labor market, mutual funds in developing countries, the spread of diseases and information, advertisements of goods and services, and political campaigns are just a few examples. Here we propose a strategic network formation model and calibrate and test it with Facebook data. The main idea in this model is that people don’t decide on creating links with others based on individual-link cost-benefit analysis, rather they participate in different social groups and creating links with others are a byproduct of this group participation. Our model does well with regard to explaining the distribution of node degrees and distances in the real world graph, but fails to explain its high clustering
Keywords:
Social Networks ; Data Transmission ; Network Formation