Understanding the socio-economic networks
Based on agents' interactions and employing the theory of fractal growth and self-organisation, the COSIN project developed a set of models for describing the growth and evolution of networks. In order to validate these models, data was also collected from the Internet and World Wide Web structure. Additionally, novel visualisation tools were realised and are expected to facilitate the analysis of datasets coming from numerical simulations and real-world. One of the key results involved the application of these findings in social and economical networks. Understanding these networks from a statistical physics point of view resulted in significant findings. Originally, it was thought that these findings would not be ready or applicable to any business practices or policy making. Yet, they triggered a few collaborations with economists and two consulting projects for the French government. The application of project results in social and economic networks offer better insight into several areas of decision making. In the case of the board of an organisation the role of well-connected minorities and lobbies was specified. For organisations sharing some of their members, decisions spreading patterns across them, as well as practices and visions through the network of interlocking relationships were understood. The structure of the ownership networks in stock markets was also investigated showing that despite their scale-free feature, they may differ according to the related topological organisation. In production networks, both spatial and temporal spontaneous macroscopic fluctuations were observed to determine failure propagations. Additionally, innovative understanding was gained on community detection in the World Wide Web. The quantitative methods used for analysis of networks of decision makers and companies can be further employed for developing marketing strategies and governmental policy making for attracting investments. It is anticipated that their use will improve the efficiency of marketing strategies, enforce governmental agencies involved in investments and promote investments across countries/regions.
