Quality in peer production systems – impact of assortativity of communication networks on group efficacy

Many online peer production systems (e.g. Wikipedia or Open Source Software communities) strive to deliver high quality intellectual goods that could compare with commercial products. While quality is key to the communities’ success – widespread adoption of their products – it is not clear what makes some succeed, while others provide subpar outcomes or fail entirely. Quality of Wikipedia articles has been previously related to the number of editors writing them or to the diversity of editors’ competences. Here we tested the hypothesis that cohesiveness of private communication networks within collaborating groups increases the quality of their products. We analyzed communication within a sample of Wikiprojects on the English Wikipedia – groups of editors that coordinate their activities to improve articles related to a specific topic. We found that most Wikiprojects communicate in a highly hierarchical, disassortative way, but the successful ones break this trend and their communication networks are structured in a more egalitarian way

Polarization and multiscale structural balance in signed networks

Polarization is a common feature of social systems. Structural Balance Theory studies polarization of positive in-group and negative out-group ties in terms of semicycles within signed networks. However, enumerating semicycles is computationally expensive, so approximations are often needed to assess balance. Here we introduce Multiscale Semiwalk Balance (MSB) approach for quantifying the degree of balance (DoB) in (un)directed, (un)weighted signed networks by approximating semicycles with closed semiwalks. MSB allows principled selection of a range of cycle lengths appropriate for assessing DoB and interpretable under the Locality Principle (which posits that patterns in shorter cycles are crucial for balance). This flexibility overcomes several limitations affecting walk-based approximations and enables efficient, interpretable methods for measuring DoB and clustering signed networks. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by applying it to real-world social systems. For instance, our methods capture increasing polarization in the U.S. Congress, which may go undetected with other methods.Comment: 29 pages; 7 figures; preprint before peer revie

Subjective Well-Being of Corporate Managers And Its Impact on Stock Market Volatility and Financial Stability During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Poland: Agent-Based Model Perspective

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2023.17 - ISSN : 1955-611XThis study aims at connecting the behavioral corporate finance (micro level) perspective andcomplexity theory along with agent-based modelling in order to analyze the impact of selected behavioral managerial factors on aggregated data related to the financial market stability (macro level). Specifically, we want to explore whether subjective well-being (SWB) of corporate managers (CEOs) impacted their business decisions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how it may be related to volatility of stock prices and the issue of financial stability during this critical period. Our study is based on a survey of 255 managers of companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Poland over the period …. Using the results of this survey, we build an agent-based model (ABM) calibrated for the specific case of Poland to investigate how decision making of CEOs, stemming from their SWB, influence the stock prices and selected financial market dynamics indicators. The results of our study indicate that the excess volatility of stock prices may be a function of changes of SWB of managers, which in turn could lead to some crashes on the macro level with respect to financial stability