Fall 2010 Seminar Series

DATE: November 4th
LOCATION: E62-550
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following in same room

SPEAKER:
Michael Kearns

TITLE
Behavioral Game Theory in Social Networks

ABSTRACT
For five years now, we have been conducting "medium-scale" experiments in how human subjects behave in strategic and economic settings mediated by an underlying network structure. We have explored a wide range of networks inspired by generative models from the literature, and a diverse set of collective strategic problems, including biased voting, graph coloring, consensus, networked trading, bargaining, and a network formation game. These experiments have yielded a wealth of both specific findings and emerging general themes about how populations of human subjects interact in strategic networks. I will review these findings and themes, with an emphasis on the many more questions they raise than answer.