Logit Dynamics with Concurrent Updates for Local Interaction Potential Games

Logit choice dynamics constitute a family of randomized best response dynamics based on the logit choice function (McFadden in Frontiers in econometrics. Academic Press, New York, 1974) that models players with limited rationality and knowledge. In this paper we study the all-logit dynamics [also known as simultaneous learning (Alós-Ferrer and Netzer in Games Econ Behav 68(2):413–427, 2010)], where at each time step all players concurrently update their strategies according to the logit choice function. In the well studied (one-)logit dynamics (Blume in Games Econ Behav 5(3):387–424, 1993) instead at each step only one randomly chosen player is allowed to update. We study properties of the all-logit dynamics in the context of local interaction potential games, a class of games that has been used to model complex social phenomena (Montanari and Saberi 2009; Peyton in The economy as a complex evolving system. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003) and physical systems (Levin et al. in Probab Theory Relat Fields 146(1–2):223–265, 2010; Martinelli in Lectures on probability theory and statistics. Springer, Berlin, 1999). In a local interaction potential game players are the vertices of a social graph whose edges are two-player potential games. Each player picks one strategy to be played for all the games she is involved in and the payoff of the player is the sum of the payoffs from each of the games. We prove that local interaction potential games characterize the class of games for which the all-logit dynamics is reversible. We then compare the stationary behavior of one-logit and all-logit dynamics. Specifically, we look at the expected value of a notable class of observables, that we call decomposable observables. We prove that the difference between the expected values of the observables at stationarity for the two dynamics depends only on the rationality level $$\beta $$β and on the distance of the social graph from a bipartite graph. In particular, if the social graph is bipartite then decomposable observables have the same expected value. Finally, we show that the mixing time of the all-logit dynamics has the same twofold behavior that has been highlighted in the case of the one-logit: for some games it exponentially depends on the rationality level $$\beta $$β, whereas for other games it can be upper bounded by a function independent from $$\beta $$β.