IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v6y2004i2p375-395.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Interplay between Analytics and Computation in the Study of Congestion Externalities: The Case of the El Farol Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Eduardo Zambrano

Abstract

In this paper I study the El Farol problem, a deterministic, boundedly rational, multi‐agent model of a resource subject to congestion externalities that was initially studied computationally by Arthur (1994). I represent the interaction as a game, compute the set of Nash equilibria in mixed strategies of this game, and show analytically how the method of inductive inference employed by the agents in Arthur's computer simulation leads the empirical distribution of aggregate attendance to be like those in the set of Nash equilibria of the game. This set contains only completely mixed strategy profiles, which explains why aggregate attendance appears random in the computer simulation even though its set‐up is completely deterministic.

Suggested Citation

  • Eduardo Zambrano, 2004. "The Interplay between Analytics and Computation in the Study of Congestion Externalities: The Case of the El Farol Problem," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 6(2), pages 375-395, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:6:y:2004:i:2:p:375-395
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00170.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00170.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00170.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A General Class Of Adaptive Strategies," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 3, pages 47-76, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. John H. Nachbar, 1997. "Prediction, Optimization, and Learning in Repeated Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(2), pages 275-310, March.
    3. J. Doyne Farmer, 2000. "Physicists Attempt To Scale The Ivory Towers Of Finance," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(03), pages 311-333.
    4. Sergiu Hart & Andreu Mas-Colell, 2013. "A Simple Adaptive Procedure Leading To Correlated Equilibrium," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Simple Adaptive Strategies From Regret-Matching to Uncoupled Dynamics, chapter 2, pages 17-46, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. W. Brian Arthur, 1994. "Inductive Reasoning, Bounded Rationality and the Bar Problem," Working Papers 94-03-014, Santa Fe Institute.
    6. Vickrey, William S, 1969. "Congestion Theory and Transport Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 251-260, May.
    7. Arthur, W Brian, 1994. "Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 406-411, May.
    8. Eduardo Zambrano, 1997. "The Revelation Principle of Bounded Rationality," Research in Economics 97-06-060e, Santa Fe Institute.
    9. Arnott, Richard & de Palma, Andre & Lindsey, Robin, 1993. "A Structural Model of Peak-Period Congestion: A Traffic Bottleneck with Elastic Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 161-179, March.
    10. Challet, D. & Zhang, Y.-C., 1997. "Emergence of cooperation and organization in an evolutionary game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 246(3), pages 407-418.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shu-Heng Chen & Umberto Gostoli, 2017. "Coordination in the El Farol Bar problem: The role of social preferences and social networks," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 12(1), pages 59-93, April.
    2. Shu-Heng Chen & Umberto Gostoli, 2011. "Agent-Based Modeling of the El Farol Bar Problem," ASSRU Discussion Papers 1120, ASSRU - Algorithmic Social Science Research Unit.
    3. Sharif, Omor & Huynh, Nathan & Vidal, Jose M., 2011. "Application of El Farol model for managing marine terminal gate congestion," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 81-89.
    4. Dindo, P.D.E. & Tuinstra, J., 2006. "A Behavioral Model for Participation Games with Negative Feedback," CeNDEF Working Papers 06-10, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud & Matteo Marsili & Jean-Pierre Nadal, 2023. "Application of spin glass ideas in social sciences, economics and finance," Papers 2306.16165, arXiv.org.
    2. Cross, Rod & Grinfeld, Michael & Lamba, Harbir & Seaman, Tim, 2005. "A threshold model of investor psychology," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 354(C), pages 463-478.
    3. Ferreira, Fernando F & Francisco, Gerson & Machado, Birajara S & Muruganandam, Paulsamy, 2003. "Time series analysis for minority game simulations of financial markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 321(3), pages 619-632.
    4. Tercieux, O.R.C. & Voorneveld, M., 2005. "The Cutting Power of Preparation," Other publications TiSEM 75173341-627f-4eb2-91f1-0, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Wawrzyniak, Karol & Wiślicki, Wojciech, 2012. "Mesoscopic approach to minority games in herd regime," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(5), pages 2056-2082.
    6. Lustosa, Bernardo C. & Cajueiro, Daniel O., 2010. "Constrained information minority game: How was the night at El Farol?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(6), pages 1230-1238.
    7. Challet, Damien & Zhang, Yi-Cheng, 1998. "On the minority game: Analytical and numerical studies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 256(3), pages 514-532.
    8. Gu, Gao-Feng & Chen, Wei & Zhou, Wei-Xing, 2008. "Empirical regularities of order placement in the Chinese stock market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(13), pages 3173-3182.
    9. Jørgen Vitting Andersen & Philippe de Peretti, 2020. "Heuristics in experiments with infinitely large strategy spaces," Post-Print hal-02435934, HAL.
    10. Yamada, Takashi & Hanaki, Nobuyuki, 2016. "An experiment on Lowest Unique Integer Games," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 463(C), pages 88-102.
    11. Linde, Jona & Sonnemans, Joep & Tuinstra, Jan, 2014. "Strategies and evolution in the minority game: A multi-round strategy experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 77-95.
    12. Mello, Bernardo A. & Cajueiro, Daniel O., 2008. "Minority games, diversity, cooperativity and the concept of intelligence," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(2), pages 557-566.
    13. Dindo, Pietro, 2005. "A tractable evolutionary model for the Minority Game with asymmetric payoffs," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 355(1), pages 110-118.
    14. Mendes, R.Vilela, 2001. "Structure-generating mechanisms in agent-based models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 295(3), pages 537-561.
    15. Jørgen Vitting Andersen & Philippe de Peretti, 2018. "New method to detect convergence in simple multi-period market games with infinite large strategy spaces," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01960900, HAL.
    16. Olivier Tercieux & Mark Voorneveld, 2010. "The cutting power of preparation," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 71(1), pages 85-101, February.
    17. Shubham Agarwal & Diptesh Ghosh & Anindya S. Chakrabarti, 2016. "Self-organization in a distributed coordination game through heuristic rules," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 89(12), pages 1-10, December.
    18. Chenge Zhu & Guang Yang & Kenan An & Jiping Huang, 2014. "The Leverage Effect on Wealth Distribution in a Controllable Laboratory Stock Market," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-10, June.
    19. Adão, Luiz F.S. & Silveira, Douglas & Ely, Regis A. & Cajueiro, Daniel O., 2022. "The impacts of interest rates on banks’ loan portfolio risk-taking," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    20. Little, L.R. & McDonald, A.D., 2007. "Simulations of agents in social networks harvesting a resource," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 204(3), pages 379-386.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:6:y:2004:i:2:p:375-395. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.