UMass Machine Learning and Friends Lunch | Main / Exclusive Bilateral Exchanges In Social Networks

Title: Exclusive Bilateral Exchanges in Social Networks Joint work with Asuman Ozdaglar and Alex (Sandy) Pentland

Abstract: We present a model of exclusive bilateral exchanges in social network and comment on stability, efficiency, fairness and dynamics. We show that when individuals in a bipartite network exclusively choose partners and exchange valued goods with their partners, then there exists a set of exchanges that are pair-wise stable. Pair-wise stability implies that no individual breaks her partnership and no two neighbors in the network can form a new partnership while breaking other partnerships if any so that at least one of them improves her payoff and the other one does at least as good. We consider a general class of continuous, strictly convex and strongly monotone preferences over bundles of goods for individuals. Thus, this work extends the general equilibrium framework from markets to networks with exclusive exchanges. We present the complete existence proof using the existence of a generalized stable matching.

Time permitting, I will also talk about the following: 1. Characterize the conditions under which pair-wise stability coincides with social efficiency. 2. Myopic dynamics that converge to pair-wise stable set of exchanges. 3. Show how the existing notions of fairness in markets and coalition games fail when applied to exclusive bilateral exchanges in networks and introduce a concept of fair exchanges in networks.

The presenter:

Ankur Mani is a PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab. He is a member of the Human Dynamics Group directed by Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland. His research is advised by Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Prof. Asuman Ozdaglar and Prof. Parag Pathak

Before joining MIT, he received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and MS degree in Electrical Engineering with a concentration in Arts, Media and Engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.