Events Calendar

Game Theory & Human Behavior (GTHB) Seminar Series (http://gthb.usc.edu/)

Speaker: Matthew O Jackson, Eberle Professor of Economics/Stanford University

Talk Title: Network Patterns of Favor Exchange

Abstract: RSPV: Please email Helen Pitts by early Monday morning so she has a headcount for lunch.

We examine the exchange of favors when any two individuals in a society interact too infrequently to sustain exchange, but where the threat of losing multiple relationships can sustain exchange. We show that networks of favor exchange that are robust, in that deleted relationships only result in a local loss of favor exchange, are such that all links are "supported": Each pair of individuals exchanging favors have a common friend with whom they also exchange favors. We then examine a unique data set consisting of detailed social networks in 77 different rural villages in southern India to test the game theoretic predictions. We find levels of `support' that are consistent with the theory and significantly higher than a standard `clustering' measure.

We also find significantly higher support in favor networks than purely social networks.

Biography: Matthew O. Jackson is the Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford (1988) and a B.A. from Princeton (1984), and served on the faculties of Northwestern University and Caltech before joining Stanford in 2006.

Jackson's research includes studies of social and economic networks, including game-theoretic studies of network formation, studies of the role of social networks in labor markets, social learning and diffusion, homophily, social mobility, friendship formation, and favor exchange, .
He has also made contributions to game theory, mechanism design and implementation theory, the study of war and conflict, and political economy.

Jackson is a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the Social Choice and Welfare Prize and Arrow Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and from the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. He is co-editor of Games and Economic Behavior and has served on the boards of Econometrica and the Journal of Economic Theory, and serves on the councils of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare, the Econometric Society, and the Game Theory Society.

Home page: http://www.stanford.edu/~jacksonm

Location: Elvon & Mabel Musick Law Building (center) (LAW) - Room 103

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Georgia Lum