Bcc: Alex Loh
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2012 11:53:12 +0200
Subject: 6 July 2012, 11:00, L017, PEM: Choosing products in social networks
 (Sunil Simon)
From: Vadim Zaytsev 
To: PEM, PNA-1

Dear colleagues and environmentalists,

The next presentation of the weekly PEM Colloquium will be given by
Sunil Simon on his joint work with Krzysztof Apt on applications of
game theory to studying social networks. You are all cordially invited
to join us at 11:00 in L017 (CWI).

 Date: 6 July 2012
 Time: 11:00
 Room: L017 (CWI)
 Speaker: Sunil Simon
 Title: Choosing Products in Social Networks
 Abstract: see below

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         Choosing products in social networks

We study using game-theoretic concepts, the consequences of adopting
products by agents who form a social network. We use the threshold
model of social networks in which the nodes influenced by their
neighbours can adopt one out of several alternatives, and associate
with each social network a strategic game between the agents. Like
certain classes of potential games, these games exhibit the "join the
crowd" property where the payoff of each player weakly increases if
more players choose the same strategy. However, such games may have no
Nash equilibrium and determining the existence of a Nash equilibrium
is NP-complete. The situation changes when the underlying graph of the
social network is a DAG, a simple cycle, or has no source nodes. For
these three classes we characterize Nash equilibria and determine the
complexity of existence of a Nash equilibrium.

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              http://event.cwi.nl/pem/calendar.html
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Yours,
     Vadim.