Analyzing the co-movements of the US Gross State Product Growth with the use of the Minimum Dominating Set

Graph Theory and network analysis have received great attention lately in the process of analyzing complex economic systems. Here we propose the use of the Minimum Dominating Set concept in order to identify a representing set of nodes which can describe the collective behavior of an entire network. We apply this technique in US Gross State Product (GSP) growth for the period 1997-2010. The correlation matrix is used to describe the co-movements of GSP growth. Our results show that the GSP of the whole 51 states network can be represented by the values of just 8 states.