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Tractability and Phase Transitions in Endogenous Network Formation

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  • Jose M. Betancourt

Abstract

The dynamics of network formation are generally very complex, making the study of distributions over the space of networks often intractable. Under a condition called conservativeness, I show that the stationary distribution of a network formation process can be found in closed form, and is given by a Gibbs measure. For conservative processes, the stationary distribution of a certain class of models can be characterized for an arbitrarily large number of players. In this limit, the statistical properties of the model can exhibit phase transitions: discontinuous changes as a response to continuous changes in model parameters.

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  • Jose M. Betancourt, 2023. "Tractability and Phase Transitions in Endogenous Network Formation," Papers 2310.10764, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2310.10764
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    References listed on IDEAS

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