We study a dynamic model of opinion formation in social networks. In our model, boundedly rational agents update opinions by averaging over their neighbors' expressed opinions, but may misrepresent their own opinion by conforming or counter-conforming with their neighbors. We show that an...

We investigate the role of manipulation in a model of opinion formation. Agents repeatedly communicate with their neighbors in the social network, can exert effort to manipulate the trust of others, and update their opinions about some common issue by taking weighted averages of neighbors'...

The last decades saw a pronounced shift in innovation policy in Germany and many other countries towards increased funding of cooperative R&D. Over the last years, competitions between regional initiatives pushed this trend even further by adding a regional perspective, by increasing the scope...

In recent literature a relevant problem has been the relationship between career/personal contactnetworks and different career paths. In addition the recent advances in social capital theory have shown the way in which networks impact on personal careers. In particular women’s careers appear...

We compare two leading regional innovation systems (RIS) in East Germany with two RIS in West Germany of about the same size and internal settlement structure. Our analyses show that differences in the performance between the regions cannot easily be related to the structural properties of the...

We analyze information and knowledge transfer in a sample of 16 German regional innovation networks with almost 300 firms and research organizations involved. The results indicate that strong ties are more beneficial for the exchange of knowledge and information than weak ties. Moreover, our...