Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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AKSOE: Arbeitskreis Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

AKSOE 12: Social, Information-, and Production Networks III

AKSOE 12.1: Talk

Thursday, March 29, 2007, 10:15–10:45, H8

Evolving R&D Networks — •Michael König, Stefano Battiston, and Frank Schweitzer — Chair of Systems Design, ETH Zurich, Kreuzplatz 5, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland

We model economic network interactions related to R&D (research and development) activities of firms. Firms can increase each others productivity e.g. by providing a new technology or transferring knowledge, which is modeled as catalytic processes on a directed dynamic network. Specifically, we study the way firms select their interactions with other firms and the impact on the network structure. Our model considers the costs for R&D interactions, and firms optimize their interactions as utility-maximizing agents. We show that (i) the time horizon in which firms evaluate their utility and (ii) the emergence of cycles are critical factors for obtaining viable R&D networks. For the emergence of cycles, two cases are discussed: Firms can either mutually exchange technologies (direct reciprocity, 2-cycle) or share a technology with other firms and hope that they will benefit from the support of another firm (indirect reciprocity, cycle of order k ≥ 3). Therefore, investigating the role of direct/indirect reciprocity is deeply connected to the investigation of the emergence/stability of cycles in the network.