We study the structure of business firm networks in the Life Sciences (LS) and the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sectors. We analyze business firm networks and scale-free models with degree distribution P(q) proportional to (q + c)^-λ using the method of k-shell decomposition. We find that the LS network consists of three components: a "nucleus", which is a small well connected subgraph, "tendrils", which are small subgraphs consisting of small degree nodes connected exclusively to the nucleus, and a "bulk body" which consists of the majority of nodes. At the same time we do not observe the above structure in the ICT network. Our results suggest that the sizes of the nucleus and the tendrils decrease as λ increases and disappear for λ greater or equal to 3. We compare the k-shell structure of random scale-free model networks with the real world business firm networks. The observed behavior of the k-shell structure in the two industries is consistent with a recently proposed growth model that assumes the coexistence of both preferential and random regimes in the evolution of industry networks.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy in its series DISA Working Papers with number
0811.