Links
BBC News - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/more_or_less/5176698.stm
Judith Kleinfeld’s website - http://www.judithkleinfeld.com/
After hearing about the small-world phenomenon and six degrees of separation, it seemed appropriate to search for recent attempts to duplicate Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment from 1967. Some experiments mentioned in lecture today, such as the e-mail experiment by Dodds, Muhammed, and Watts, came up multiple times in […]

In class we explored how analyzing a network’s structure reveals information about the individuals participating in the network: their importance in a cluster, their relationships amongst neighbors, etc. How can this information be leveraged in real world applications? One purported use is to gather and project downloading habits of users in P2P networks like BitTorrent. […]

As many know, we are currently experiencing what many consider the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The housing bubble contributed significantly to the current economy’s downfall. How did this housing bubble form? Was it due to greed? Was it due to ignorance or irrational behaviors?
Robert Shiller wrote in his article, How a Bubble […]

 
http://www.deloitte.co.uk/TMTPredictions/technology/Social-networks-in-the-enterprise.cfm
http://many.corante.com/archives/2003/09/15/the_weakening_of_strong_ties.php 
 In this class we have spoken a lot about the growth of social networks and the significance that they have for both people and businesses.  In the article “Social networks in the enterprise: Facebook for the Fortune 500”, Deloitte forecasts that Fortune 500 companies and other business will greatly increase their use of top-down socializing […]

Until the breakdown of the Wall Street, the oil price has skyrocketed to almost $140 per barrel due to increasing demand of oil in economic boom. And many countries whose economy depends greatly on export of oil have enjoyed great inflow of foreign currency. However, by the fall of Wall Street, as the […]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123966372945715013.html
Last Tuesday’s lecture focused on lemon markets, a phenomenon that I think is risking the future of banking in America.  The Troubled Assets Relief Program (Tarp) was a program to “bailout” banks in financial distress.  To financially help some banks without divulging which were in trouble, the government forced many banks to accept billions of dollars in […]

Recent events have  shed light on the growing problem of Somali pirates cashing in by hijacking cargo ships and holding them for ransom. A reflection upon Somalia’s greater economic problems, the rise of piracy has been catalyzed by political instability and famine on the mainland. The severity of the situation has increased to the point […]

http://tiee.ecoed.net/vol/v2/issues/frontier_sets/rich/pdf/Frontiers-Stohlgren(etal)-Overview.pdf
Prominent biologists such as Charles Darwin and Charles Elton have traditionally believed that it is easiest for new plant species to grow in areas that are not species-rich because there is less competition for vital resources in such areas. This seems to be quite a reasonable assertion but recent experiments and statistical research from the […]

http://www.welton.it/articles/webhosting_market_lemons
This article ties in closely with the market for lemons that we discussed in class. The market for lemons is the idea that in a market with asymmetric information between buyers and sellers, there is a long continuum for the quality of sold goods. These goods range from high, to zero (lemons). But […]

So far in class, we’ve talked primarily about the positive effects of networks. In most cases, networks which make preferences and opinions more widely known contribute to marketplaces which are socially optimal. It wasn’t until Professor Easley mentioned the Policy Analysis Market that I realized networks could actually be manipulated to encourage gravely […]