Journal on Policy and Complex Systems
Result 3 : Costs to Flexibility
The third result is more of a comment or innovation .
The final major result is that there are disadvantages to flexibility that do not rely on costs to changing behavior — which is typically modeled as a costly act . It is costly in the exploration versus exploitation literature , for one , and many other places ( Jones-Rooy , n . d .; March , 1991 ). During early stages of model building , I intended to add a “ cost to change types ” variable in order to generate limitations on benefits from flexibility . Surprisingly , I discovered I did not need to add this effect in order to see negative effects of flexibility in the agents . As discussed above , flexibility frequently undermines agents despite our initial intuition that flexibility should imply adaptability , and thus success .
To make sure , I ran the model with an added constant cost to changing types . I discovered at it actually slightly improved outcomes at both the group and individual level , as it meant agents flipped back and forth between unsatisfactory strategies less . The result was not particularly strong , but it suggests a direction for further research that would include cost as a function of the magnitude of the change , or costs that vary over time — perhaps as agents switch types more they get better at it and thus it is less costly .
Examples of Runs
An advantage of agent-based modeling is that it can illustrate process as
well as outcome . In this section , we examine some of the above-mentioned concepts — diversity and inequality — in terms of how they came about over time in the model . In all cases , I have selected just one or two examples of a run that are representative of most outcomes . If there are major outliers , I will say so .
Figures 6 and 7 show equality and inequality in two sample runs , respectively . Notice that in the unequal case , the two strategies begin at the same utility , but just slightly more Type S starts to tip it , until there are a lot more Type S , and Type C is permanently lower simply because they do not have the numbers required to increase their utility .
Both cases begin with probability of changing type = 1 and probability of changing vision = 1 , and they begin with equal number Type C ( red ) and Type S ( blue ).
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