Congestion Allocation for Distributed Networks: An Experimental Study

Yan Chen, School of Information, University of Michigan, 1075 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2112. Email: [email protected]. Laura Razzolini Department of Economics, School of Business, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1015 Floyd Avenue, Box 844000 Richmond, VA 23284-4000. E-mail: [email protected]. Theodore L. Turocy Department of Economics, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843. Email: [email protected] Abstract This paper reports an experimental study of two prominent congestion and cost allocation mechanisms for distributed networks. We study the fair queuing (or serial) and the FIFO (or average cost pricing) mechanisms under two different treatments: a complete information treatment and a limited information treatment designed to simulate distributed networks. Experimental results show that the fair queuing mechanism performs significantly better than FIFO in all treatments in terms of efficiency, predictability measured as frequency of equilibrium play, and the speed of convergence to equilibrium.