Social and economic networks

Abstract

This chapter analyses social and economic networks. It starts with an introduction to the problem of data collection and analysis in social sciences, and then discusses the global structural properties of social networks in a critical way. The chapter examines the causes of degree assortativity in social networks; social communities in different scenarios; the centrality of actors in social networks; the 'robustness' of the different centrality measures to incorrect or incomplete data; and the problem of intercorrelation between centrality measures. The last section of the chapter is dedicated to the study of economic networks, in particular to the analysis of a very large trade network in Japan, as well as an international trade network of miscellaneous items.