Convergence and oscillation in standardization games

EMMANUELLE AURIOL, and MICHEL BENAIM

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2001)

Auriol and Benaim (2000) studied in a model inspired by evolutionary game theory, how standards and norms emerge in decentralized economies when there are two standards. They showed that the decentralized adoption process always converges toward a stable equilibrium (possibly an incompatibility one). This paper explores the robustness of Auriol and Benaim (2000) convergence results. It shows that with more than two standards the decentralized adoption process does not necessarily converge. It can oscillate and describe cycles.