Multi-activity Influence and Intervention

Abstract

Using a general network model with multiple activities, we analyse a planner’s welfare maximising interventions taking into account within-activity network spillovers and cross-activity interdependence. We show that the direction of the optimal intervention, under sufficiently large budgets, critically depends on the spectral properties of two matrices: the first matrix depicts the social connections among agents, while the second one quantifies the strategic interdependence among different activities. In particular, the first principal component of the interdependence matrix determines budget resource allocation across different activities, while the first (last) principal component of the network matrix shapes the resource allocation across different agents when network effects are strategic complements (substitutes). We explore some comparative statics analysis with respective to model primitives and discuss several applications and extensions.

Keywords: Networks, multiple activities, interventions, centralities