We consider an economy in which agents are embedded in a network of potential value-generating relationships. Agents are assumed to be able to participate in three types of economic interactions: Autarkic self-provision; bilateral interaction; and multilateral collaboration. We introduce two...

We consider a relational economy in which economic agents participate in three types of relational economic activities: autarkic activities; binary matching activities; and plural cooperative activities. We introduce a stability notion and characterize stable interaction structures, both in the...

Yang's theory of economic specialization under increasing returns to scale (Yang 2001) is a formal development of the fundamental Smith-Young theorem on the extent of the market and the social division of labor. In this theory specialization and, thus, the social division of labor is firmly...

A symmetric network consists of a set of positions and a set of bilateral links between these positions. Examples of such networks are exchange networks, communication networks, disease transmission networks, control networks etc. For every symmetric network we define a cooperative transferable...

In this paper, we connect the social network theory on centrality measures to the economic theory of preferences and utility. Using the fact that networks form a special class of cooperative TU-games, we provide a foundation for the degree measure as a von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility...

Agents participating in different kind of organizations, usually take different positions in some network structure. Two well-known network structures are hierarchies and communication networks. We give an overview of the most common models of communication and hierarchy restrictions in...