2020/02/10 by Benjamin Golub, Golub, Benjamin
Decision Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #FOS: Economics and business #FOS: Physical sciences #Game Theory and Applications #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Theoretical Economics (econ.TH)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2002.03569
openalex publication_date 2020/02/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This note presents a simple overlapping-generations (OLG) model of the transmission of a trait, such as a culture. Initially, some fraction of agents carry the trait. In each time period, young agents are "born" and are influenced by some older agents. Agents adopt the trait only if at least a certain number of their influencers have the trait. This influence may occur due to rational choice (e.g., because the young agents are playing a coordination game with old agents who are already committed to a strategy), or for some other reason. Our interest is in how the process of social influence unfolds over time, and whether a trait will persist or die out. We characterize the dynamics of the fraction of active agents and relate the analysis to classic results on branching processes and random graphs.