Modeling the emergence of norms(Extended Abstract)

摘要

Norms or conventions can be used as external correlating signals to promote coordination between rational agents and hence have merited in-depth study of the evolution and economics of norms both in the social sciences and in multia-gent systems. While agent simulations can be used to gain a cursory idea of when and what norms can evolve, the estimations obtained by running simulations can be costly to obtain, provide no guarantees about the behavior of a system, and may overlook some rare occurrences. We use a theoretical approach to analyze a system of agents playing a convergence game and develop models that predict (a) how the system's behavior will change over time, (b) how much time it will take for it to converge to a stable state, and (c) how often the system will converge to a particular norm.