Readings

A list of readings by session is available below.

Textbooks

The lecture slides we will provide contain all of the information and material you need for the course.

In addition, two textbooks are useful supplements, and you will benefit from studying one or both of those, particularly to obtain additional details or different derivations and discussions. The first is David Easley's and Jon Kleinberg's forthcoming book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World, which covers most of the topics at a level somewhat lower than this class.

[EK] = Easley, David, and Jon Kleinberg. Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780521195331.

At a level that is slightly more advanced than our course is Matthew Jackon's Social and Economic Networks, which is a useful reference both for substantive and technical material.

[Jackson] = Jackson, Matthew O. Social and Economic Networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780691134406.

The analysis of economic and social networks relies heavily on game theory. Of course, the course does not presume any game theoretic background, though some students will have taken 14.12 Economic Applications of Game Theory or may be concurrently registered with this course. We will cover all of the game theory that you need as we go along. Two books that are excellent references are:

[Osborne] = Osborne, Martin J. Introduction to Game Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780195128956.

[Gibbons] = Gibbons, Robert. Game Theory for Applied Economists. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780691003955.

We will also refer to a variety of other books that are non-technical. These will be particularly useful in providing you with context and possible real-world applications. Some of the material in these books is overblown, so be warned. These books are:

[Gladwell] = Gladwell, Malcom. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co, 2002. ISBN: 9780316346627.

[Surowiecki] = Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Sharpens Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations. New York, NY: Doubleday Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 9780385503860. Reprinted with a new Afterword as: The Wisdom of Crowds. Anchor Books ed. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2005. ISBN: 9780385721707.

[Barabasi] = Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. ISBN: 9780452284395.

[Schelling] = Schelling, Thomas C. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. Revised ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co., 2006. ISBN: 9780393329469. This old classic is still relevant.

Finally, we will also refer to the following book for Markov chains:

Bertsekas, Dimitri, and John Tsitsiklis. Introduction to Probability. 2nd ed. Belmont, MA: Athena Scientific, 2008. ISBN: 9781886529236.

Readings by Session

Additional Study