Social influence in markets complicates equilibrium computation, challenging conventional beliefs.
The article explores how social influence affects market equilibrium complexity. By studying a model where traders' preferences are influenced by their neighbors, the researchers found that even simple markets with few goods can be hard to compute equilibria for. They discovered that influence networks can make equilibrium computation more difficult, but hierarchical networks might be easier to work with. The study challenges the idea that markets with a small number of goods are always easy to analyze.