Issue |
EPL
Volume 108, Number 5, December 2014
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 58001 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/108/58001 | |
Published online | 03 December 2014 |
Dynamic motifs in socio-economic networks
1 College of Transport and Communication, Shanghai Maritime University - Shanghai, 201306, China
2 Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University - Boston, MA 02215, USA
3 Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University - 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel
Received: 7 August 2014
Accepted: 7 November 2014
Socio-economic networks are of central importance in economic life. We develop a method of identifying and studying motifs in socio-economic networks by focusing on “dynamic motifs,” i.e., evolutionary connection patterns that, because of “node acquaintances” in the network, occur much more frequently than random patterns. We examine two evolving bi-partite networks: i) the world-wide commercial ship chartering market and ii) the ship build-to-order market. We find similar dynamic motifs in both bipartite networks, even though they describe different economic activities. We also find that “influence” and “persistence” are strong factors in the interaction behavior of organizations. When two companies are doing business with the same customer, it is highly probable that another customer who currently only has business relationship with one of these two companies, will become customer of the second in the future. This is the effect of influence. Persistence means that companies with close business ties to customers tend to maintain their relationships over a long period of time.
PACS: 89.75.-k – Complex systems / 89.65.Ef – Social organizations; anthropology / 64.60.aq – Networks
© EPLA, 2014
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