Microeconomics

摘要

Individuals learn about new products from friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Countries trade goods and services differentially with other countries. Firms receive spillovers from research and development by nearby or related firms. Financial institutions trade assets bilaterally in over-the-counter markets. In these examples, an agent (be it an individual, country, firm, or financial institution) interacts with or imposes particular externalities on a subset of other agents. Each of those "other agents" then interacts with or imposes externalities on a (possibly) different subset of agents. These local relationships coalesce into a global, interconnected structure: a network. The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks seeks to review and summarize the literature to date on such interaction structures in economics.