Inconsistency Versus Accuracy of Heuristics

Many studies in heuristic search suggest that the accuracy of the heuristic used has a positive impact on improving the performance of the search. In another direction, historical research perceives that the performance of heuristic search algorithms, such as A* and IDA*, can be improved by requiring the heuristics to be consistent – a property satisfied by any perfect heuristic. However, a few recent studies show that inconsistent heuristics can also be used to achieve a large improvement in these heuristic search algorithms. These results raise a natural question: which property of heuristics, accuracy or consistency/inconsistency, should we focus on when building heuristics?