Date: 2012
Type: Thesis
Network Structure Matters: Applications to R&D collaboration, collusion, and online communication networks
Florence : European University Institute, 2012, EUI, ECO, PhD Thesis
KORKMAZ, Gizem, Network Structure Matters: Applications to R&D collaboration, collusion, and online communication networks, Florence : European University Institute, 2012, EUI, ECO, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/25137
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This thesis studies the interplay between network structure and strategic decision making given the backdrop of economic and social networks. The first two chapters study how firms’ incentives to invest in costly R&D are affected by the pattern of R&D collaborations in a certain industry. These two chapters propose formal models that build upon and enrich the previous literature, which abstracted from two crucial dimensions of the problem. The first chapter introduces the possibility that inter-firm links aiming at R&D collaboration could facilitate market collusion. The second chapter incorporates network-based externalities resulting from informational flows and congestion that are associated with R&D collaborations. These chapters suggest that the benefits of possible inter-firm collaboration must be reevaluated from the point of their welfare consequences. The last chapter aims to improve our understanding of how collective action spreads in large and complex networks in which agents use online social networks as communication tools. To this end, we develop a dynamic game-theoretic model of the “on-set of revolutions” that focuses on the local spread of information in order to study how network structure, knowledge and information-sharing interact in facilitating coordination through online communication networks.
Additional information:
Defence date: 20 December 2012; Examining Board: Professor Elena Carletti, EUI; Professor Rense Corten, Tilburg University; Professor Jose Luis Moraga-González, VU University of Amsterdam; Professor Fernando Vega Redondo, Supervisor, EUI.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/25137
Full-text via DOI: 10.2870/63947
Series/Number: EUI; ECO; PhD Thesis
Publisher: European University Institute