2001/03/23 by Àlex Arenas, A. Arenas, A. Diaz-Guilera +8
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #FOS: Physical sciences #Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models #Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0103496
31 pages, LaTeX, to appear in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control
arxiv created 2001/03/23 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/23 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper studies a stylized model of local interaction where agents choose from an ever increasing set of vertically ranked actions, e.g. technologies. The driving forces of the model are infrequent upward shifts (``updates''), followed by a rapid process of local imitation (``diffusion''). Our main focus is on the regularities displayed by the long-run distribution of diffusion waves and their implication on the performance of the system. By integrating analytical techniques and numerical simulations, we come to the following two main conclusions. (1) If dis-coordination costs are sufficiently high, the system behaves critically, in the sense customarily used in physics. (2) The performance of the system is optimal at the frontier of the critical region. Heuristically, this may be interpreted as an indication that (performance-sensitive) evolutionary forces induce the system to be placed ``at the edge of order and chaos''