Stability, chaos and multiple attractors: A single agent makes a difference

This paper provides an example in which a slight behavioral heterogeneity may fundamentally change the qualitative properties of a nonlinear cobweb market with a quadratic cost function and an isoelastic demand function. We consider two types of producers; adaptive and naive. In a market of naive agents a single adaptive agent stabilizes the otherwise exploding market. In a market of adaptive agents a single naive agent may destabilize the market; without him there exists at most one periodic attractor in the market but with him there may appear many coexisting periodic attractors of arbitrarily large periods.