Computational analysis of structural properties of economic and financial networks

Frank Emmert-Streib, Aliyu Musa, Kestutis Baltakys, Juho Kanniainen, Shailesh Tripathi, Olli Yli-Harja, Herbert Jodlbauer and Matthias Dehmer

Abstract

In recent years, methods from network science have been rapidly gaining traction in economics and finance. One reason for this is that, in a globalized world, it is crucial that we understand the interconnections between economic and financial entities; networks provide a natural framework for representing and studying such systems. In this paper, we survey the use of networks and network-based methods to study economy- related questions. We start with a brief overview of graph theory and some basic definitions. Then, we discuss descriptive network measures and network complex- ity measures for quantifying the structural properties of economic networks. Finally, we discuss different network and tree structures as well as their relevance to certain applications