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Strong random correlations in networks of heterogeneous agents

2012/10/11 by Imre Kondor, István Csabai, Kondor, Imre +9
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Economics and business #FOS: Physical sciences #General Finance (q-fin.GN) #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #cond-mat.dis-nn #physics.soc-ph #q-fin.GN

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1210.3324

28 pages, 17 figures

openalex publication_date 2012/10/11 · arxiv created 2014/02/24 · arxiv updated 2014/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Correlations and other collective phenomena in a schematic model of heterogeneous binary agents (individual spin-glass samples) are considered on the complete graph and also on 2d and 3d regular lattices. The system's stochastic dynamics is studied by numerical simulations. The dynamics is so slow that one can meaningfully speak of quasi-equilibrium states. Performing measurements of correlations in such a quasi-equilibrium state we find that they are random both as to their sign and absolute value, but on average they fall off very slowly with distance in all instances that we have studied. This means that the system is essentially non-local, small changes at one end may have a strong impact at the other. Correlations and other local quantities are extremely sensitive to the boundary conditions all across the system, although this sensitivity disappears upon averaging over the samples or partially averaging over the agents. The strong, random correlations tend to organize a large fraction of the agents into strongly correlated clusters that act together. If we think about this model as a distant metaphor of economic agents or bank networks, the systemic risk implications of this tendency are clear: any impact on even a single strongly correlated agent will spread, in an unforeseeable manner, to the whole system via the strong random correlations.

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