Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Itai Arieli
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology
Author-Email: iarieli@tx.technion.ac.il
Author-Name: Yakov Babichenko
Author-Workplace-Name: Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology
Author-Email: yakovbab@technion.ac.il
Author-Name: Ron Peretz
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, Bar Ilan University
Author-Email: ron.peretz@biu.ac.il
Author-Name: H. Peyton Young
Author-Workplace-Name: London School of Economics and Nuffield College, University of Oxford
Author-Email: peyton.young@economics.ox.ac.uk
Title: The Speed of Innovation Diffusion
Abstract: New ways of doing things often get started through the actions of a few innovators, then diffuse rapidly as more and more people come
into contact with prior adopters in their social network. Much of the literature focuses on the speed of diffusion as a function of the network
topology. In practice, however, the topology may not be known with any precision, and it is constantly in flux as links are formed and
severed. Here we establish an upper bound on the expected waiting time until a given proportion of the population has adopted that holds
independently of the network structure. Kreindler and Young [33, 2014] demonstrated such a bound for regular networks when agents choose between two options: the innovation and the status quo. Our bound holds for directed and undirected networks of arbitrary size and degree distribution, and for multiple competing innovations with different payoffs.
Length: 31 pages
Creation-Date: 2018-12-17
Number: 2018-W06
File-URL: https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/economics/Papers/2018/2018W06_ID5.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:econwp:1806