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Sumhith Aradhyula

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Graduate Student Research Funding | 2023–2024 Academic Year

Estimating Preferences Over Links to Communities in Networks

A class of strategic social network formation models supposes costs to both searching for and maintaining links; if there are multiple types of nodes, these search and maintenance costs can vary based on the types of both the origin and destination nodes. This project aims to estimate demand for links to different “types” in real-world network settings, where, in practice, search and maintenance costs can be hard to observe and measure. Findings from this project are particularly salient in settings with distinct communities (for example ethnic, racial, or caste groups), where link composition by group (i.e. homophily vs. heterophily) is known to affect a range of important outcomes including socio-economy mobility, social norms, and social learning. In particular, a better empirical understanding of how agents’ linking behavior moves at the margin when costs change can help to better predict network externalities to policies that may affect these costs.


Sumhith Aradhyula, Department of Economics

headshot of Sumhith Aradhyula. Photo of a smiling man in a black turtleneck.

Sumhith Veda Aradhyula is a PhD student in Economics at Stanford University with primary research interests in networks, behavioral economics, and econometrics. Prior to Stanford, Sumhith worked as a research assistant in economics at Harvard University. Sumhith holds a BA in Statistics and South Asian Studies (Joint) from Harvard University.

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