'The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks' represents the frontier of research into how and why networks they form, how they influence behavior, how they help govern outcomes in an interactive world, and how they shape collective decision making, opinion formation, and diffusion...

We discuss social network analysis from the perspective of economics. We organize the presentation around the theme of externalities: the effects that one's behavior has on others' welfare. Externalities underlie the interdependencies that make networks interesting to social scientists. We...