Adapting to heterogeneous comfort levels

Abstract

We study the learning dynamics of agents who adapt to heterogeneous comfort levels in the context of an El-Farol type game, and show that even an infinitesimal degree of heterogeneity in the resource levels leads to a significant reduction of the fluctuations of the collective action, and removes the phase transition observed in models with homogeneous comfort level. Our analysis is based on dynamical methods of disordered systems theory, in particular on a generating functional approach, and confirmed by numerical experiments. We also report on simulations of a system in which the comfort levels fluctuate in time, and point out crucial differences between models in which the comfort levels of the agents fluctuate collectively and individually respectively. Finally we comment on a possible characterisation of El-Farol and Minority Games according to the presence or absence of ergodicity-breaking phase transitions at infinite integrated response.