Fixation of leadership in non-Markovian growth processes

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteur principal: Iyer, Tejas
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Iyer, Tejas
author_facet Iyer, Tejas
contents Consider a model where $N$ equal agents possess `values', belonging to $\mathbb{N}_0$, that are subject to incremental growth over time. More precisely, the values of the agents are represented by $N$ independent, increasing $\mathbb{N}_0$ valued processes with random, independent waiting times between jumps. We show that the event that a single agent possesses the maximum value for all sufficiently large values of time (called `leadership') occurs with probability zero or one, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for this to occur. Under mild conditions we also provide criteria for a single agent to become the unique agent of maximum value for all sufficiently large times, and also conditions for the emergence of a unique agent having value that tends to infinity before `explosion' occurs (i.e. conditions for `strict leadership' or `monopoly' to occur almost surely). The novelty of this model lies in allowing non-exponentially distributed waiting times between jumps in value. In the particular case when waiting times are mixtures of exponential distributions, we improve a well-established result on the `balls in bins' model with feedback, removing the requirement that the feedback function be bounded from below and also allowing random feedback functions. As part of the proofs we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the distribution of a convergent series of independent random variables to have an atom on the real line, a result which we believe may be of interest in its own right.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_11516
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fixation of leadership in non-Markovian growth processes
Iyer, Tejas
Probability
Combinatorics
Consider a model where $N$ equal agents possess `values', belonging to $\mathbb{N}_0$, that are subject to incremental growth over time. More precisely, the values of the agents are represented by $N$ independent, increasing $\mathbb{N}_0$ valued processes with random, independent waiting times between jumps. We show that the event that a single agent possesses the maximum value for all sufficiently large values of time (called `leadership') occurs with probability zero or one, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for this to occur. Under mild conditions we also provide criteria for a single agent to become the unique agent of maximum value for all sufficiently large times, and also conditions for the emergence of a unique agent having value that tends to infinity before `explosion' occurs (i.e. conditions for `strict leadership' or `monopoly' to occur almost surely). The novelty of this model lies in allowing non-exponentially distributed waiting times between jumps in value. In the particular case when waiting times are mixtures of exponential distributions, we improve a well-established result on the `balls in bins' model with feedback, removing the requirement that the feedback function be bounded from below and also allowing random feedback functions. As part of the proofs we derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the distribution of a convergent series of independent random variables to have an atom on the real line, a result which we believe may be of interest in its own right.
title Fixation of leadership in non-Markovian growth processes
topic Probability
Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.11516