This paper develops strategic foundations for an important statistical model of random networks with heterogeneous expected degrees. Based on this, we show how social networking services that subtly alter the costs and indirect benefits of relationships can cause large changes in behavior and...

To study how economic fundamentals affect the formation of social networks, a model is needed that (i) has agents responding rationally to incentives (ii) can be taken to the data. This paper combines game-theoretic and statistical approaches to network formation in order to develop such a...