Agent-based model of competition in a social structure

TL;DR

This paper presents an agent-based model of competition within small-world social networks, demonstrating how network topology influences competition outcomes and aligning model predictions with empirical data on language death and telecom rivalry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel agent-based model that captures the impact of network structure on competition dynamics, validated against real-world data.

Findings

Network evolution depends on local neighbor density parameter k.

Model accurately reproduces patterns of language death.

Model aligns with empirical data on telecom competition.

Abstract

Indirect competition emerged from the complex organization of human societies, and knowledge of the existing network topology may aid in developing effective strategies for success. Here, we propose an agent-based model of competition with systems co-existing in a `small-world' social network. We show that within the range of parameter values obtained from the model and empirical data, the network evolution is highly dependent on $k$, the local parameter describing the density of neighbors in the network. The model applied to language death and competition of telecommunication companies show strong correspondence with empirical data.