Excellent PhD Thesis Lecture on Dynamics of Large Networks...

I must say that I am a little bit jealous...if my PhD thesis and defense are half as good as the one presented here then I will be happy...

A major finding of his research is that networks tend to become more dense over time and that this densification process follows a power law.  My network version of Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis would postulate some type of limit cycle behavior (either stable of chaotic) of network density.  Now I am not convinced that his empirical work contradicts my idea for the following reason.  His data come from LinkedIn, MSN, and other large online data-sets.  It does not seem like there would be strong incentives to break links in these types of networks given that the cost of continuing to maintain the link is zero.  However, in my world where the links represent financial inter-dependencies of agents, there can be very strong incentives to break links as the cost of maintaining a link could conceivably be quite high...