This article provides a first empirical study of the determinants of the propensity to which academic scholars tend to perform interdisciplinarity research. For that purpose we introduce a measure of interdisciplinarity as the diversity of their research production across scientific domains. Our...

This paper aims to demonstrate that the strategic approach of network formation can generate networks that share the main structural properties of most real social networks. We introduce a spatialized variation of the Connections model (Jackson and Wolinski, 1996) in which agents balance the...

In this paper, we make an exploratory use of numerical techniques (genetic algorithms and Monte Carlo simulations) to compute efficient and emergent networks in a spatialized version of the connections model of Jackson and Wolinski (1996). This approach allows us to observe and discuss the...

This paper introduces a spatialized variation of the Connections model of Jackson and Wolinski (1996). Agents benefit from their direct and indirect connections in a communication network. They are arranged on a circle and bear costs for maintaining direct connections which are linearly...

In this paper we present an original model of sequential problem choice within scientific communities. Disciplinary knowledge is accumulated by solving problems emerging in a growing tree-like web of research areas. Knowledge production is sequential since the problems solved generate new...

This paper is concerned with the incentive properties of the Matthew Effect by which since Merton [1968] one is usually describing the various cumulative advantages that obviously affect academic competition. We introduce a model of sequential contests in which the agents that have initially...

Crucial to the analysis in this paper is the Coasian insight that external costs result from conflicting uses of scarce resources and that responsibility for these costs should not be attributed exclusively to polluters as required by the polluter pays principle (PPP). The paper argues that the...