Diversity and Optimality

Lu Hong and Scott E. Page

Research in Economics from Santa Fe Institute

Abstract: In this paper, we construct a general model of diverse problem solvers of limited abilities. We use this model to derive two main results: (1) a collection of diverse, bounded problem solvers can locate optimal solutions to difficult problems and (2) a collection of problem solvers of diverse abilities tends to jointly outperform a collection of high ability problem solvers, where a problem solver's ability equals her expected individual problem.

Submitted to: American Economic Review.

Keywords: Diversity; bounded rationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/98-08-077E.ps (application/postscript)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/98-08-077E.ps [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/98-08-077E.ps)
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/98-08-077E.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/98-08-077E.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/98-08-077E.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:safire:98-08-077e

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research in Economics from Santa Fe Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().