Effects of Switching Costs in Distributed Problem-Solving Systems

In many situations, changing the status quo may induce particular extra costs. Such switching costs are assumed to cause inertia and reduce performance. This paper studies the effects of switching costs in distributed problem-solving systems and, for this, employs an agent-based simulation based on NK fitness landscapes. The results indicate that the complexity of the problem to be solved considerably shapes the effects of switching costs. Depending on the period of time in the search for superior solutions, switching costs may even have beneficial effects in terms of stabilizing the search and increasing the system's performance.