2010/05/26 by David Aldous, Aldous, David J.
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Mathematics #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Probability (math.PR)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1005.4846
openalex publication_date 2010/05/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Continually arriving information is communicated through a network of n agents, with the value of information to the j'th recipient being a decreasing function of j/n, and communication costs paid by recipient. Regardless of details of network and communication costs, the social optimum policy is to communicate arbitrarily slowly. But selfish agent behavior leads to Nash equilibria which (in the n → ∞ limit) may be efficient (Nash payoff = social optimum payoff) or wasteful (0 < Nash payoff