Seminars in Social Networks and Markets -- Academic Year 2016/17

(Click here to go to the page for year 2015/16.)

Announcements

Exam Rules

Each student that does not attend 75% of the lectures will undergo an oral exam on the contents of the course (as defined in the Syllabus and the Class Diary). Attendance in class is highly recommended.

Each student is required to complete any homework that will be assigned in class; any such assignment will also be published on this website.

Finally, each student will be assigned a project (either a software project or a literature survey) and will have to present and discuss the project at the exam. See the bottom of this webpage for more details about the project and some sample projects.

Instructors

Dr. Vincenzo Bonifaci, IASI-CNR
Contact address: (surname)@diag.uniroma1.it

When and Where

When: Tuesday 9.10-10.45, Wednesday 14.10-15.40 and Friday 9.10-9.55
Where: Via Ariosto 25, Rooms A3 (Tuesday), A7 (Wednesday) and A3 (Friday)

Office Hours

Fridays, 10.30-11.30 (Via Ariosto 25, Room B118)
All meetings have to be confirmed by email

Textbook(s)

The official textbook of the class is

• Networks, Crowds and Markets by D. Easley and J. Kleinberg (Cambridge University Press, 2010), also available on the authors' website.

The textbook will be complemented by lecture notes from the instructor for some of the lectures.
Another useful reference is

• Networks: An Introduction by M.E.J. Newman (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Syllabus

1. Network structure: graph theory and social networks; measures of centrality; communities and assortative mixing; small worlds, power laws and scale-free networks.
2. Network dynamics: network effects; information cascades and cascading in networks; epidemics and influence processes; network search and message passing.
3. Strategic interaction in networks and online markets: network traffic and equilibria; algorithmic mechanism design and computerized auctions; market equilibria; matching markets; online labor marketplaces; voting mechanisms.

Class Diary (see here for last year's diary)

The notation [EKxx] refers to Chapter xx in the textbook by Easley and Kleinberg. Similarly, [Nxx] refers to a Chapter in the textbook by Newman.