Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/233295 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion paper No. 79
Publisher: 
Aboa Centre for Economics (ACE), Turku
Abstract: 
Techniques based on using principal eigenvectors of matrices representing binary relations of sets of alternatives are commonly used in social sciences, bibliometrics, and web search engines. In most applications the binary relations can be represented by a directed graph and the question of ranking or scoring the alternatives can be turned into the question of assessing the centrality of nodes of the graph. This paper characterizes the principal eigenvector as a scoring function with a set of axioms. A zero-sum scoring function based on the difference of principal right and left eigenvectors is introduced and axiomatized. Furthermore, a method of assessing individual and group centralities simultaneously is characterized by a set of axioms. The specific case of this method is the Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search (HITS) used in ranking web sites.
Subjects: 
principal eigenvector
graph
centrality
scoring
axiom
JEL: 
C60
C70
D70
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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