Matthew O. Jackson

William D. Eberle Professor of Economics

• Office Address:

  Department of Economics, 579 Jane Stanford Way 
  Stanford University, Stanford California 94305-6072, USA
   

• E-mail: jacksonm ``at'' stanford.edu

BIO   VITAE   BOOKS   PAPERS   DATA   COURSES/MOOCS   MEDIA/LINKS/RELICS   BLOGS

``The Human Network'' -- A book on networks for the general public.

Discussion questions for book clubs and classes.

Chapter 3 on contagion has been posted to help people who want some background given COVID-19.

Here are the Amazon, as well as the Pantheon/Penguin Random House (US) and Atlantic Books (UK and commonwealth) pages for the book. There is an audible version of the book from Recorded Books, and a Chinese translation from Citic Press (ISBN 9787521704068) and Russian, Korean, and Japanese translations.

In it I discuss how a handful of simple and quantifiable features of human networks yield enormous insight into why we behave the way we do. Two threads are interwoven: why human networks have special features, and how those features determine our power, opinions, opportunities, behaviors, and accomplishments. Some of the topics included are: the different ways in which a person's position in a network determines their influence; which systematic errors we make when forming opinions based on what we learn from our friends; how financial contagions work and why are they different from the spread of a flu; how splits in our social networks feed inequality, immobility, and polarization; and how network patterns of trade and globalization are changing international conflict and wars. The book is non-technical, with no equations but many pictures, and is full of rich examples and cases that illustrate the points.


The contents:


• 1. Introduction: Networks and Human Behavior
• 2. Power and Influence: Central Positions in Networks
• 3. Diffusion and Contagion
• 4. Too Connected to Fail: Financial Networks
• 5. Homophily: Houses Divided
• 6. Immobility and Inequality: Network Feedback and Poverty Traps
• 7. The Wisdom and Folly of the Crowd
• 8. The Influence of Our Friends and Our Local Network Structures
• 9. Globalization: Our Changing Networks

Here is a pdf file of the figures from the book (including the correct 6.3 as 6.1 was printed twice). You may use them for your private use or for teaching purposes with appropriate attribution to The Human Network. Please do not republish them or use them for commercial purposes without explicit permission of the author.

• A pdf file of the figures.

Here are a variety of writeups and reviews of The Human Network:

• A review in Kirkus Review.
• A review in The New York Times.
• A review in The Wall Street Journal.
• An interview in The Stanford Report .
• An interview in Hebrew in The Calcalist.
• An article in Spanish in La Vanguardia.
• An article in Spanish in El Economista (Espana).


Here are some podcasts, videos, and radio shows on The Human Network:

• A video of the Walras-Pareto Lecture in Lausanne.
• A podcast with Julie Masters of the Inside Influence Podcast and the podcast general website.
• A podcast with Rachelle Saunders of Science for the People.
• A podcast with Matt Anderson of the Road Not Taken.
• A Freakanomics podcast ``How to Change Your Mind'' about opinion formation.
• A video of a presentation at Google.
• an interview on Krys Boyd's NPR show
• a video of a discussion with Nick Obradovich about Social Networks, AI, and Insulated Communities that covers many topics from the book.
• an interview on Armen Shirvanian's Podcast
• an interview on Joe Danohue's WAMC Northeast Public Radio's show
• an interview on on Max Roth's ``What and Why'', and a brief video introduction.
• an interview on Mike Caruther's ``Something You Should Know''
• a video of a presentation regarding financial markets and systemic risk (that eventually gets a bit more technical), but begins with some key trends discussed in the book: The American Finance Association Lecture 2019.
• an interview on Mountain Life/KPCW-FM (Utah Public Radio)

``Social and Economic Networks'' -- A book on networks for researchers and advanced students.

``Social and Economic Networks'' synthesizes the literatures on the subject and is a resource for researchers in the area and a text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses. It is available from Princeton University Press.

Here is the table of contents and the introductory chapter.

Here are the Amazon and Princeton University Press pages for the book.

Here are links to some reviews of the book:


• a review by Haris Aziz in the ACM SIGecom Exchanges in July 2009,
• a review by John Curran in the Mathematical Association of American Online in March 2009,
• a review by Joan de Marti in Regional Science and Urban Economics in September 2009,
• a review by Rainer Diaz-Bone in International Sociology in September 2010,
• a review by David Krackhardt in Science Magazine in October 2009,
• a review by James Rauch in the JEL in December 2010,
• a review by Karoly Takacs in JASSS in March 2009,
• a blog posting about the book from Gary Hoover in September 2010.

If you are teaching a course using the book and would like access to solutions to some of the exercises, please email me (instructors only please!).

A free online course covers some of the material from the book.

Here is a list of typos and clarifications.