But just when it looks as though order is going to be restored, brokers 2 and 3 start to fight over category 1. As the brokers undercut each other in price, their profits shoot up and down, never going to zero because the sets of consumers served by the two brokers do not overlap perfectly. Finally, at time 473, broker 2 cedes category 1 to broker 3, and the three brokers are once again fully specialized, one to each category. Figure 9 shows a close-up of a somewhat different price war that starts near time 1750. At first, brokers 1 and 3 vie for category 1, leaving category 3 uncovered.
Prices continue to drop.
At time 1878, broker 3 finds that it can drop its competition with broker 1 by dropping category 3, leaving it a specialist in category 1. A quantitative analysis of this coupling would be valuable, and appears to be feasible. After some further switches in broker 1's interest vector, brokers 1 and 2 eventually specialize in categories 2 and 3 respectively, their prices drift up towards the monopolistic optimal point, and the brokers are once again in specialized niches. 6 and 10 . During the metastable regimes, each broker has a single-category monopoly.