The Prescription Approach to Decentralized Stochastic Control with Word-of-Mouth Communication

Abstract

In this paper we analyze a network of agents that communicates through word of mouth. In a word-of-mouth communication system, every agent communicates with its neighbors with delays in communication. This is a non-classical information structure where the topological and temporal restrictions in communication mean that information propagates slowly through the network. We present the prescription approach to derive structural results for such problems. The structural results lead to optimal control strategies with time invariant domain-sizes. We show that these domains are smaller in size than the control strategies derived using the common information approach.