Call for Papers—Special Issue of Operations Research: Information and Decisions in Social and Economic Networks

Networks have become increasingly pervasive in our lives: social networks not only have a defining impact on consumer choice but are also central in social and political decisions, ranging from political discourse in the blogosphere to the organization and coordination of protests in the Arab Spring. Economic and financial transactions also increasingly occur over large, complex, dynamically changing networks, not only contributing to the efficient allocation of resources, but also occasionally creating large, systemic, and poorly understood risks. Similarly, network effects are now seen as major elements in healthcare, smart power grids, urban transportation, and more.

We invite high-quality submissions in social and economic networks, construed broadly to include any system in which human action and control play a major role. We welcome contributions based on rigorous mathematical models, as well as empirical and simulation studies, that contribute to the understanding of network formation, cascades, reliability, information and action propagation, decision making, inference, measurement, and efficient optimization algorithms over networks. We seek papers that apply tools from operations research, statistics, computer science, applied mathematics, and physics to offer novel insights, build new models, and possibly provide recommendations to policy makers.

To submit your paper, go to the Operations Research ScholarOne Manuscripts site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/opre and follow the instructions provided.

July/August 2015: Expected issue publication date.