Rapid Evolution under Inertia

This paper demonstrates that inertia driven by switching costs leads to more rapid evolution in a class of games that includes m x m pure coordination games. Under the best-response dynamic and a fixed rate of mutation, the expected waiting time to reach long-run equilibrium is of lower order in the presence of switching costs, due to the creation of new absorbing inertia states that allow Ellison`s (Review of Economic Studies 67, 2000, 17-45) step-by-step evolution to occur.