https://macropaperwarehouse.com/authors/bryony-reich/Bryony ReichHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/the-architecture-of-social-networks-and-the-diffusion-of-innovations/https://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/the-architecture-of-social-networks-and-the-diffusion-of-innovations/<p>This paper examines how the architecture of social networks shapes the success or failure of technology diffusion when adoption decisions exhibit strategic complementarities. The research question is: which structural feature of a network determines whether a new technology spreads or fails, and in which direction does that feature work?</p> <p>The paper builds on the canonical threshold diffusion model of Morris (2000) and Granovetter (1978), in which an agent adopts a new technology if the share of his neighbors who have adopted exceeds a threshold Q in [0,1]. The key innovation is the addition of a second structural object — a set of decision-making units C — that captures the empirically common phenomenon that subsets of agents (friends, family, neighbors, colleagues) can coordinate and make joint adoption decisions. The model is purely theoretical; the paper derives characterizations and comparison theorems rather than estimating parameters from data.</p>