This paper considers a game played among players who seek to extract payoffs from a group of individuals subject to local interaction effects. We are interested in the relation between the network of social interaction and equilibrium actions and payoffs. We start with an analysis of two economic examples – strategic advertising in the presence of word of mouth advertising and social non-competitive marketing – to bring out the simple point that changing network connections can increase as well as decrease equilibrium actions and payoffs. This leads to an investigation of general conditions on payoffs under which equilibrium actions and payoffs increase/decrease with an increase in density of connections. We also develop conditions under which a greater dispersion in network connections leads unambiguously to positive and negative effects on actions as well as payoffs.
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Paper provided by University of Essex, Department of Economics in its series Economics Discussion Papers with number
639.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Andrea Galeotti & Sanjeev Goyal & Matthew O. Jackson & Fernando Vega-Redondo & Leeat Yariv, 2008.
"Network Games,"
Economics Working Papers
ECO2008/07, European University Institute.
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