Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/260394 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
cemmap working paper No. CWP13/22
Publisher: 
Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (cemmap), London
Abstract: 
Consider a setting where N players, partitioned into K observable types, form a directed network. Agents' preferences over the form of the network consist of an arbitrary network benefit function (e.g., agents may have preferences over their network centrality) and a private component which is additively separable in own links. This latter component allows for unobserved heterogeneity in the costs of sending and receiving links across agents (respectively out- and in- degree heterogeneity) as well as homophily/heterophily across the K types of agents. In contrast, the network benefit function allows agents' preferences over links to vary with the presence or absence of links elsewhere in the network (and hence with the link formation behavior of their peers). In the null model which excludes the network benefit function, links form in-dependently across dyads in the manner described by Charbonneau (2017). Under the alternative there is interdependence across linking decisions (i.e., strategic interaction). We show how to test the null with power optimized in specific directions. These alternative directions include many common models of strategic network formation (e.g., "connections" models, "structural hole" models etc.). Our random utility specification induces an exponential family structure under the null which we exploit to construct a similar test which exactly controls size (despite the the null being a composite one with many nuisance parameters). We further show how to construct locally best tests for specific alternatives without making any assumptions about equilibrium selection. To make our tests feasible we introduce a new MCMC algorithm for simulating the null distributions of our test statistics.
Subjects: 
Network formation
Locally Best Tests
Similar Tests
Exponential Family
Incomplete Models
Degree Heterogeneity
Homophily
Binary Matrix Simulation
Edge Switching Algorithms
JEL: 
C31
C57
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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