Fast convergence in evolutionary models: A Lyapunov approach

Abstract

Evolutionary models in which N players are repeatedly matched to play a game have “fast convergence” to a set A if the models both reach A quickly and leave A slowly, where “quickly” and “slowly” refer to whether the expected hitting and exit times remain bounded when N tends to infinity. We provide simple and general Lyapunov criteria which are sufficient for reaching quickly and leaving slowly. We use these criteria to determine aspects of learning models that promote fast convergence.