This CAS/ACE site was actively maintained from 1996-2006. However, the CAS/ACE literature is now growing at a rapid rate, making it difficult to keep postings current. For this reason, since 2006 attention has been more narrowly focused on ACE introductory materials together with illustrative examples of ACE research in selected areas. A linked listing of ACE introductory materials and research sites can be accessed
here.
Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, September 2000,
272 pages, ISBN 0-262-51115-0.
From the publisher: "Janet Abbate recounts the key players and
technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is
always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's
design and use. The story she unfolds is an often twisting tale of
collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including
government and military agencies, computer scientists in academia and
industry, graduate students, telecommunications companies, standards
organizations, and network users."
Janet Abbate is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the
University of Maryland, College Park.
Frédéric Amblard, "Simulating Social Networks: A Review of
Three Books" (html,7pp),
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), Vol. 6,
No. 2, March 2003 (electronic journal).
Amblard reviews Duncan Watt's Small Worlds... (1999),
Albert-Lázló Barabási's Linked (2002), and Mark
Buchanan's Nexus... (2002); see below for pointers to these readings.
Masanao Aoki, Modeling Aggregate Behavior and Fluctuations in Economics: Stochastic Views of Interacting Agents, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 280pp., 2005.
Abstract (From the Publisher): "This book analyzes how a large but finite number of agents interact, and what sorts of macroeconomic statistical regularities or patterns may evolve from these interactions. By keeping the number of agents finite, it examines situations such as fluctuations about equlibria, multiple equilibria and asymmetrical cycles of models which are caused by model states stochastically moving from one basin of attraction to another. The book also discusses how agents may form clusters with stationary distributions of cluster sizes."
Masanao Aoki has taught at UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois, Osaka University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the University of Cambridge.
Albert-László Barabási, Linked: The New Science
of Networks(html),
Perseus Publisher, May 2002. ISBN: 0-738-20667-9.
From the publisher: "In Linked, Barabasi, a physicist whose
work has revolutionized the study of networks, traces the development of this
rapidly unfolding science and introduces us to the scientists carrying out
this pioneering work. These `new cartographers' are mapping networks in a
wide range of scientific disciplines, proving that social networks,
corporations, and cells are more similar than they are different, and
providing important new insights into the interconnected world around us.
This knowledge, says Barabasi, can shed light on the robustness of the
Internet, the spread of fads and viruses, even the future of democracy.
Engaging and authoritative, Linked provides an exciting preview of the
next century in science, guaranteed to be transformed by these amazing
discoveries."
Albert-László Barabási is the Emil T. Hofman
Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana.
Mark Buchanan, Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of
Networks, W. W. Norton and Co., 256pp., May 2002. ISBN: 0-393-04153-0.
From a review by Colleen Cuddy for the Library Journal (copyright
2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.): "(Buchanan) delivers a good
introduction to theoretical physics and the `small worlds' theory of
networks. He sees biology, computer science, physics, and sociology as
intimately connected. Buchanan illustrates social and physical networks with
examples ranging from the infamous `six degrees of separation' theories, to
the spread of the AIDS virus, to the mapping of the nervous system of the
nematode worm. Are the similarities among these networks merely a
coincidence or the result of some underlying physics? Only further research
will tell, but in the meantime this book is a good primer to basic network
concepts and contains references to key journal articles and studies for
further reading."
Mark Buchanan holds a Ph.D. in physics and has been an editor at
Nature and the New Scientist.
P. Cohendet, P. Llerena, H. Stahn, G. Umbhauer (eds.), The Economics
of Networks: Interactions and Behaviors, Springer-Verlag, 1998, 339 pp.,
$96.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 3-540-64699-X
From the publisher: "This description of the economics of networks
considers them from various perspectives, such as classical approaches,
methods derived from physics, the theory of evolutionary games, and
experimental economics. These different views shed new light on the
behaviour and interaction of economic agents, on networks, and on related
phenomena: emergence of stable macro structures from micro interactions,
standardisation, diffusion, preservation of diversity, the role of
heterogeneity, local learning, surplus creation, and surplus allocation. The
book presents the state of the art and offers a unique opportunity to
understand specific networks phenomena through different theoretical and
experimental approaches."
The editors are all at the University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg,
France.
Gabrielle Demange and Myrna Wooders (eds.), Group Formation in
Economics: Networks, Clubs, and Coalitions, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK, 2004. ISBN: 0-521-84271-9.
S. N. Dorogovtsev and J. F. F. Mendes, Evolution of Networks: From
Biological Nets to the Internet and WWW, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
UK, March 2003, 344pp. ISBN: 0-198-51590-1.
Topics addressed in this book include: What are networks; real
networks; equilibrium networks; non-equilibrium networks; global topology of
networks; growth of networks; and self-organized criticality.
Stanley J. Liebowitz, Re-Thinking the Network Economy: The True Forces
that Drive the Digital Marketplace, AMACOM, 210 pp., September 2002.
ISBN 0-814-40649-1
From the Publisher: "What has become eminently apparent since the
dot-com collapse is that standard economic theories apply to Internet
business just as much as they do to any other enterprise. Many dot-coms have
failed, but e-commerce isn't going away, and business leaders need to
understand what went wrong in order to dominate in the real new economy.
(This book) examines exactly where, how, and why so many e-commerce firms
went wrong, and how, utilizing traditional economic concepts, businesses can
build the foundation for success in the future."
Stanley Liebowitz is Professor of Managerial Economics at the
University of Texas at Dallas.
Stanley J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, Winners,
Losers, and Microsoft: Competition and Antitrust in High
Technology, The Independent Institute, Revised Edition (March
2001), 308 pp., ISBN 0-945-99984-4.
From the book jacket: "Few issues in high technology are as
divisive as the raging debate over competition, innovation, and
antitrust. Why do certain products and technologies become dominant
while others fail? Is there something about high technology that
makes markets less dependable at choosing goods and services? Will
the robust competition and technological advances of the past two
decades continue? Or, will they be suffocated by larger firms
employing monopolistic practices? Is antitrust primarily employed
against monopolies to increase competition for the benefit of
consumers, or is it actually a vehicle that firms use against their
rivals to restrict competitive process? ... Can markets `lock in'
inferior technologies to the exclusion of better ones? Do `network
effects' create monopolies? How do antitrust laws affect
entrepreneurship and innovation? What about the Internet browser
wars and Microsoft's battle with the U.S. Department of Justice?
(This book) is the authoritative book on these and other pressing
questions confronting high-technology markets."
Stanley Leibowitz is Professor of Managerial Economics at the
University of Texas at Dallas. Stephen Margolis is Professor of Economics at
North Carolina State University.
Anna Nagurney (ed.), Innovations in Financial and Economic
Networks, New Dimensions in Networks, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd,
322pp., 2003, ISBN: 1-843-76415-6.
From the publisher: "Networks provide the foundations for the
functioning of our societies and economies. Their study has had a long
tradition in such fields as engineering, operations research, management
science and computer science. More recently, the disciplines of finance and
economics have come to be rich and fascinating sources of network-based
problems and applications. This focused and refereed volume of contributions
from leading international scholars provides a wealth of innovations in the
study of financial and economic networks."
Anna Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor in the Isenberg
School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, U.S.A.
Anna Nagurney and June Dong, Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the
Information Age, Edward Elgar Publishers, Northampton, 348 pp., 2002.
ISBN: 1-840-64968-2.
From the book jacket: "In this book the authors provide a unifying
framework for the study of decision-making by a variety of economic agents
including consumers and producers as well as distinct intermediaries in the
context of today's networked economy. They provide the conceptual,
analytical, and computational tools for the study of supernetworks. Their
approach is rigorous and of sufficient generality and detail to give added
insight into the behavior and structure of large-scale, interacting and
complex network systems, such as transportation, telecommunication, and
financial networks."
The book is the first in a new Edward Elgar book series titled New
Dimensions in Networks. Additional information on the book can be found
here.
under "Books and Series." The preface and a sample chapter can also be
downloaded from the same site under "Download Chapter."
Anna Nagurney, Sustainable Transportation Networks,
Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, England, 2000, 304 pp., ISBN
1-84064-375-9.
From the publisher: "Transportation networks are essential
to the functioning of societies and economies and provide the
infrastructure for the movement of people and goods over space and
time. The existence and utilization of transportation networks are
fundamental to the modern age and the negative effects of congestion
and pollution associated with their increasing usage demand urgent
attention."
"This book cogently addresses the question as to whether
transportation networks are sustainable: that is, can they last,
given the growing demands on the network, on the one hand, and the
desire to alleviate the associated negative impacts, on the other.
Anna Nagurney answers the question positively by providing a
rigorous foundation for the formulation, analysis, and computation
of solutions to such problems through the use of appropriate
policies ranging from tolls and tradable pollution permits to the
design of the networks themselves."
Anna Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor,
Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts at
Amherst.
Anna Nagurney, Network Economics: A Variational Inequality
Approach, Revised Second Edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
c. 1999, 436 pp., ISBN: 0-7923-8350-8.
From the publisher: "The second and revised edition of Network
Economics: A Variational Inequality Approach provides an updated
treatment of network economics through the inclusion of new theoretical
results and new applications, as well as problems for self-study purposes
and/or for use in the classroom."
"This volume remains true to the first edition in that it provides a
unified treatment of finite-dimensional variational inequalities, algorithms,
and applications. ... The network framework provides not only a mechanism
for the graphic representation of economic problems and a means for
visualizing their similarities and differences, but, in addition, a novel
theoretical approach. Problems treated include: congested transportation
systems, oligopolistic market equilibrium problems, problems of human
migration, and general financial and economic equilibrium problems. New
applications covered in this second edition include environmental networks
and knowledge networks."
For additional information about his book, visit the
Kluwer promotional site.
Anna Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
Eli M. Noam, Interconnecting the Network of Networks, The
MIT Press, May 2001, 375 pp., ISBN: 0-262-14072-1.
From the publisher: "This book describes the transformation
of telecommunications from national network monopolies to a new
system, the network of networks, and the glue that holds it
together, interconnection. By their very nature, monopoly-owned
networks provided a small number of standardized, nation-wide
services. Over the past two decades, however, new forces in the
world economy began to unravel this traditional system. The driving
force behind the change was the shift toward an information-based
economy. Especially for large organizations, the price, control,
security, and reliability of telecommunications became variables
requiring organized attention. Thus, monopoly began to give way to
the `network of networks,' the foundation of today's
telecommunications and Internet infrastructure. Taking a broad,
multidisciplinary perspective, Eli Noam discusses the importance and
history of interconnection policy, as well as recent policy reforms
both within the United States and around the globe."
Eli Noam is Professor of Finance and Economics at the
Columbia Business School and Director of the Columbia University
Institute for Tele-Information.
James E. Rauch and Alessandra Casella (eds.), Networks and
Markets, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2001. See also
a review of this book by Ezra W. Zuckerman in the Journal of
Economic Literature, Vol. XLI (June 2003), 545-565.
The authors argues that economists' knowledge of markets and
sociologists' rich understanding of networks can and should be combined.
Together they can help us achieve a more coherent view of economic incentives
and the established channels of personal relationships.
Steven H. Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order,
Hyperion, 338 pp., March 2003. ISBN: 0-786-86844-9
From Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information,
Inc.): "Strogatz is a Cornell mathematician and pioneer of the science of
synchrony, which brings mathematics, physics, and biology to bear on the
mystery of how spontaneous order occurs at every level of the cosmos, from
the nucleus on up. In this eminently accessible and entertaining book...,
Strogatz explores synchrony in chaos systems, at the quantum level, in
small-world networks as exemplified by the parlor game `six degrees of Kevin
Bacon' and in human behavior involving fads, mobs and the herd mentality of
stock traders. The author traces how the isolated and often accidental
discoveries of researchers are beginning to get into the science of
synchrony, and he amply illustrates how the laws of mathematics underlie the
universe's uncanny capacity for spontaneous order."
Steven Strogatz is a Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
and a member of the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University,
Ithaca, New York.
Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis:
Methods and Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1999
reprint (1994 original).
This book reviews and discusses methods for the analysis of social
networks, with a focus on applications of these methods to many substantive
examples.
Duncan J. Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, W.
W. Norton and Co., 368 pp., February 2003. ISBN: 0-393-04142-5
From the publisher: "(Watts is) the pioneering young scientist whose
work on the structure of small worlds has triggered an avalanche of interest
in networks. In this remarkable book, (he) sets out to explain the
innovative research that he and other scientists are spearheading to create a
blueprint of our connected planet. Whether they bind computers, economies,
or terrorist organizations, networks are everywhere in the real world, yet
only recently have scientists attempted to explain their mysterious
workings."
Duncan Watts is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia
University.
Duncan J. Watts, Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks Between Order
and Randomness, Princeton University Press, October 1999, 262 pp., ISBN
0-69-100541-9.
From the publisher: "How do networks matter? Simply put, local
actions can have global consequences, and the relationship between local and
global dynamics depends critically on the network's structure. Watts
illustrates the subtleties of this relationship using a variety of simple
models --- the spread of infectious disease through a structured population;
the evolution of cooperation in game theory; the computational capacity of
cellular automata; and the synchronisation of coupled phase-oscillators.
...This fascinating exploration will be fruitful in a remarkable variety of
fields, including physics and mathematics, as well as sociology, economics,
and biology."
Duncan J. Watts is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia
University.
Harrison C. White, Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of
Production, Princeton University Press, 384 pp., January 2001. ISBN:
0-691-08871-3.
From the publisher: "In (this book) one of America's most influential
sociologists unveils a groundbreaking theory of the market economy. Arguing
that most economists use overly abstract models of how the economy operates,
Harrison White seeks a richer, more empirically based alternative. In doing
so, he offers a more lucid, generalized treatment of the market models
described in his important earlier work in order to show how any given market
is situated in a broader exchange economy... Throughout, White draws
extensively on case studies of American businesses and on recent mathematical
and sociological work on networks."
Harrison C. White is Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia
University, New York.
tesfatsi AT iastate.edu
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
6. Economic and Social Network Formation