Vertex centrality as a measure of information flow in Italian Corporate Board Networks

The aim of this article is to investigate the governance models of companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange by using a network approach, which describes the interlinks between boards of directors. Following mainstream literature, I construct a weighted graph representing the listed companies (vertices) and their relationships (weighted edges), the Corporate Board Network; I then apply three different vertex centrality measures: degree, betweenness and flow betweenness. What emerges from the network construction and by applying the degree centrality is a structure with a large number of connections but not particularly dense, where the presence of a small number of highly connected nodes (hubs) is evident. Then I focus on betweenness and flow betweenness; indeed I expect that these centrality measures may give a representation of the intensity of the relationship between companies, capturing the volume of information flowing from one vertex to another. Finally, I investigate the possible scale-free structure of the network.