http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071017-comp-sci-researchers-use-economic-theory-to-disrupt-malware-black-markets.html
This article by Justin Berka discusses an interesting campaign underway by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the International Computer Science Institute, and the University of California, San Diego. The goal is to analyze and befuddle online black market interactions.
According to Berka, the researchers employ two similar strategies to choke Black Market trade. Both methods operate […]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23335173/
In the above article, the Associated Press states that housing sales dropped .4 percent this month, the slowest pace observed since 1999.  The median price of a home has also dropped 5% in price since this time last year.  With this news, it becomes apparent that a bipartite preferred seller graph can explain what is […]

The recent release of the new website Juicycampus.com has created much controversy on college campuses across the country. It is a public blog that allows students on college campuses to make anonymous posts regarding current gossip that’s going around. Students are able to search the sight by simply typing in one’s name to see […]

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/berman/P4S3.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-evolutionary/
Evolutionary game theory brings a mathematical tool to analyze the concept of evolution and survival of the fittest. The websites above question the rigidity of game theory when applied to the biological or cultural side of evolution. Using the prisoner’s dilemma as a model for behavior implies that there is an intrinsic selfishness in […]

As many people already know, poker is not just a card game. As other gambles, opponents’ decision matter, and statistical probability also matters when one expects the result. However, different from many gambles that players have to play regardless of their hands, in poker, players can fold after looking at their hands. Also, different from […]

In the fifth millennia BCE, Western civilization began to take shape on the fertile banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The rich soils of Mesopotamia provided strong incentive for humans to create large, organized settlements, subsisting on the power of agriculture. Eventually, these agricultural settlements became what most scholars recognize as the […]

How did we go from a strong housing market and the low interest rates to $200 billion total loss in financial institutions? Why is it that “bubbles” repeatedly form in the economy and inevitably burst?

Image taken from CagleCartoons.com 
Whether the system you are looking at is a financial network of banks or an ecosystem of organisms, there are similarities […]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/government/article/games-played-vote_482985_18.html
This Fox Business article discusses how game theoretic strategies might be applied to voting for a president. In particular, it cites Wisconsin as being a state where voters are allowed to vote for any of the candidates in the primaries, regardless of party affiliation. The article points out that this means a Republican […]

In chapter 2 of the book we discussed the importance of weak ties. In Particular, we talked about Granovetter’s findings based on the interviews he conducted. From these discussions we then concluded that weak ties in networks are more powerful than we may think at first. A question that came to my mind after this […]

In his paper, “Social Networks, Civil Society, and the Prospects for Consolidating Russia’s Democratic Transition” (2001), James Gibson uses the concept of social networks to explain how strong and weak ties between individuals can facilitate the democratization process in Russia.
The literature on civil society suggests that democracy requires high levels of public association between individuals […]