ects of local information on group behavior

The performance of individual agents in a group depends critically on the quality of information available to it about local and global goals and resources In general it is assumed that the more accurate and up to date the available infor mation the better is the expected performance of the individual and the group This conclu sion can be challenged in a number of scenar ios We investigate the use of limited informa tion by agents in choosing between one of sev eral di erent options and conclude that if agents are deliberately kept ignorant about any number of options the entire group can converge faster to a stable and optimal con guration We also demonstrate how a couple of coalition formation schemes improves the rate of convergence and conclude that a variable rather than xed coali tion formation mechanism is more e ective