Effort Profiles in Multi-Agent Resource Allocation

Multi-agent systems are particularly appropriate for resource allocation, but configuring them for efficient operation requires understanding their dynamics. Concepts from statistical physics, such as phase transitions, can help. In decision problems such as constraint satisfaction, such transitions exhibit an easy-hard-easy effort profile, so that highly overconstrained problems are easier to solve than those near the transition. The conventional wisdom is that the profile in optimization problems such as resource allocation is monotonic, becoming more difficult as constraints increase