Network Science's Chief Economist

So Matt, uh, maybe we could start talking about networks because I think, uh, you've done more than any other economist to bring this into focus as an object of interest for, for social science more broadly and economics in particular.

But networks, of course, have been looked at in many other disciplines, sociology in particular, I think maybe anthropology also.

And maybe we can start by talking about what economics brings to the study of networks that is novel and insightful.

Yeah.

Uh, I mean, I-- So I first got interested in networks through a, a, I guess, serendipitous lunch conversation with Asher Wolinsky at Northwestern, and we start-- we were just talking about power.

You know, how do people get power? What does it mean to be powerful and being connected, and, and how would you actually measure that? And a- at that time, this was the early '90s, the, the sociology literature had been at it for about a century.

So-

Yeah

...

so they'd been looking quite deeply into this.

And I think what economics-- You know, uh, an economist's view was different than a sociologist's view of the question.

So we were very interested in incentives.

We were very interested in, you know, who chooses to be friends with whom.

How does somebody like, uh, um, a, a Cosimo de' Medici build their network? What are the incentives to build the network? And, and so I think economics brings a couple of things to the table.

One is, um, a, a choice-based perspective, and the second is a welfarist approach, right? So, so we start thinking about utilities and preferences, and you can evaluate a network as being socially better than another network in terms of, of, uh, w- how it manages to communicate information, how it aggregates information.

So the perspective of an economist was slightly different, so it sort of complements the sociology literature was already there.

Mm-hmm.

And then it brings a lot of different applications to the table as well, financial networks-

Right

... supply chains, um, countries, and, and, uh, trade patterns.

So there's a, a lot of other things that, that end up being on an economist's-

Right

... plate that, that are, are natural to look at.

Yeah, that's, that's really helpful.

I, uh, wanted to ask you also within economics, methodologically, that paper with, uh, Wolinsky was-- has been very influential.