Complex Dynamics of a N-Players Cournot Game with Adaptive Adjustments

This paper considers the dynamics of an N-players Cournot game with quadratic dynamical system for stochastic output adjustment of firms. For each output adjustment, the firms can apply 3 strategies: increasing, decreasing or maintaining their last output based on their naive expectation and adaptation judgement. We concentrate on the transition process from non-equilibrium state to the equilibrium state, which intuitively illustrates the progressing of multi-agent systems from inefficient to efficient in the real world. An intermittent pattern is demonstrated that the firms´ outputs remain stable at most time but bursts of output oscillation occur randomly and intermittently. A symmetric property in the strategy states of all the firms is found, which indicates that prevalent strategy reversals exist in periods of bursts.