A two-stage working model strategy for network analysis under Hierarchical Exponential Random Graph Models

Abstract: Social networks as a representation of relational data, often possess multiple types of dependency structures at the same time. There could be clustering (beyond homophily) at a macro level as well as transitivity (a friend's friend is more likely to be also a friend) at a micro level. Motivated by \cite{schweinberger2015local} which constructed a family of Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) with local dependence assumption, we argue that this kind of hierarchical models has potential to better fit real networks. To tackle the non-scalable estimation problem, the cost paid for modeling power, we propose a two-stage working model strategy that first utilize Latent Space Models (LSM) for their strength on clustering, and then further tune ERGM to archive goodness of fit.