Large Deviations Theory of Increasing Returns

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Franchini, Simone, Balzan, Riccardo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911042949349376
author Franchini, Simone
Balzan, Riccardo
author_facet Franchini, Simone
Balzan, Riccardo
contents An influential theory of increasing returns has been proposed by the economist W. B. Arthur in the '80s to explain the lock-in phenomenon between two competing commercial products. In the most simplified situation there are two competing products that gain customers according to a majority mechanism: each new customer arrives and asks which product they bought to a certain odd number of previous customers, and then buy the most shared product within this sample. It is known that one of these two companies reaches monopoly almost surely in the limit of infinite customers. Here we consider a generalization [G. Dosi, Y. Ermoliev, Y. Kaniovsky, J. Math. Econom. 23, 1-19 (1994)] where the new customer follows the indication of the sample with some probability, and buy the other product otherwise. Other than economy, this model can be reduced to the urn of Hill, Lane and Sudderth, and includes several models of physical interest as special cases, like the Elephant Random Walk, the Friedman's urn and other generalized urn models. We provide a large deviation analysis of this model at the sample-path level, and give a formula that allows to find the most likely trajectories followed by the market share variable. Interestingly, in the parameter range where the lock-in phase is expected, we observe a whole region of convergence where the entropy cost is sub-linear. We also find a non-linear differential equation for the cumulant generating function of the market share variable, that can be studied with a suitable perturbations theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2210_12585
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Large Deviations Theory of Increasing Returns
Franchini, Simone
Balzan, Riccardo
Probability
Statistical Mechanics
91B02, 91B42, 91B82
G.3; I.6
An influential theory of increasing returns has been proposed by the economist W. B. Arthur in the '80s to explain the lock-in phenomenon between two competing commercial products. In the most simplified situation there are two competing products that gain customers according to a majority mechanism: each new customer arrives and asks which product they bought to a certain odd number of previous customers, and then buy the most shared product within this sample. It is known that one of these two companies reaches monopoly almost surely in the limit of infinite customers. Here we consider a generalization [G. Dosi, Y. Ermoliev, Y. Kaniovsky, J. Math. Econom. 23, 1-19 (1994)] where the new customer follows the indication of the sample with some probability, and buy the other product otherwise. Other than economy, this model can be reduced to the urn of Hill, Lane and Sudderth, and includes several models of physical interest as special cases, like the Elephant Random Walk, the Friedman's urn and other generalized urn models. We provide a large deviation analysis of this model at the sample-path level, and give a formula that allows to find the most likely trajectories followed by the market share variable. Interestingly, in the parameter range where the lock-in phase is expected, we observe a whole region of convergence where the entropy cost is sub-linear. We also find a non-linear differential equation for the cumulant generating function of the market share variable, that can be studied with a suitable perturbations theory.
title Large Deviations Theory of Increasing Returns
topic Probability
Statistical Mechanics
91B02, 91B42, 91B82
G.3; I.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.12585