Structural and non-structural temporal evolution of socio-economic real networks

In this paper, we show that a comprehensive analysis of temporal network evolution requires to consider measures of non-structural changes, in addition to classical topological indicators. We employ a recently proposed measure of non-structural dynamics, together with other structural indicators, to analyze the time evolution of three subnetworks, extracted from the Italian corporate board network. Consistently with recent literature, we show that, to different extent, both structural and non-structural changes are present and must be accounted for, in order to get a satisfactory description of their temporal evolution.