Coordination, Local Interactions and Endogenous Neighborhood Formation

Abstract

The paper presents a local interaction model of coordination with spatially-located agents who simultaneously choose stage-game strategies and adaptively learn how to choose their neighbors. We analyze the behavior of the system when network externalities become eventually negative as neighborhood sizes increase. We show that the society can robustly reach in the long-run steady states characterized by high levels of coordination and small average neighborhood sizes. Moreover, we find that: (i) neighborhood adjustment allows for higher coordination than if interaction structures were static; and: (ii) large populations attain higher coordination provided that average initial neighborhood sizes are not too small.Learning, Coordination, Nearest-Neighbor Interactions, Endogenous Neighborhood Formation.