Experimentation, imitation, and stochastic stability. (English) Zbl 0917.90302
Summary: Do boundedly rational agents repeatedly playing a symmetric game with a unique symmetric equilibrium learn over time to play it? In this paper, we model the dynamic interaction of two types of such agents, experimenters and imitators, whose behavior is characterized by simple rules of thumb. We find that the stochastic process describing their play is stable in the large: it converges globally and with probability one to a compact neighborhood of the equilibrium. However, its local behavior near the equilibrium depends in interesting ways on the details of the model. \(\copyright\) Academic Press.
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