Reputation for innovating social networks

Reputation is a fundamental instrument of partner selection. Developed within the domain of electronic auctions, reputation technology is being been imported by other applications, from social networks to institutional evaluation. Its impact on trust enforcement is uncontroversial and its management is of primary concern for entrepreneurs and other economic operators. In this paper, we will briefly report on simulation-based studies of the role of reputation as a more tolerant form of social capital than familiarity networks. Whereas the latter exclude nontrustworthy partners, reputation is a more inclusive mechanism on which larger and more dynamic networks are constructed. After the presentation of the theory of reputation developed by the authors in the last decade, a computational system (REPAGE) for forming and exchanging reputation information will be presented and findings from experimental simulations recently run on this system will be resumed. Final remarks and ideas for future work will conclude the paper.