The downside of heterogeneity: How established relations counteract systemic adaptivity in tasks assignments

11/20/2021
by   Giona Casiraghi, et al.
0

We study the lock-in effect in a network of task assignments. Agents have a heterogeneous fitness for solving tasks and can redistribute unfinished tasks to other agents. They learn over time to whom to reassign tasks and preferably choose agents with higher fitness. A lock-in occurs if reassignments can no longer adapt. Agents overwhelmed with tasks then fail, leading to failure cascades. We find that the probability for lock-ins and systemic failures increase with the heterogeneity in fitness values. To study this dependence, we use the Shannon entropy of the network of task assignments. A detailed discussion links our findings to the problem of resilience and observations in social systems.

READ FULL TEXT

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset