We study the existence of approximate pure Nash equilibria ($α$-PNE) in weighted atomic congestion games with polynomial cost functions of maximum degree $d$. Previously it was known that $d$-approximate equilibria always exist, while nonexistence was established only for small constants, namely for $1.153$-PNE. We improve significantly upon this gap, proving that such games in general do not have $\tildeΘ(\sqrt{d})$-approximate PNE, which provides the first super-constant lower bound.
Furthermore, we provide a black-box gap-introducing method of combining such nonexistence results with a specific circuit gadget, in order to derive NP-completeness of the decision version of the problem. In particular, deploying this technique we are able to show that deciding whether a weighted congestion game has an $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{d})$-PNE is NP-complete. Previous hardness results were known only for the special case of exact equilibria and arbitrary cost functions.
The circuit gadget is of independent interest and it allows us to also prove hardness for a variety of problems related to the complexity of PNE in congestion games. For example, we demonstrate that the question of existence of $α$-PNE in which a certain set of players plays a specific strategy profile is NP-hard for any $α< 3^{d/2}$, even for unweighted congestion games.
Finally, we study the existence of approximate equilibria in weighted congestion games with general (nondecreasing) costs, as a function of the number of players $n$. We show that $n$-PNE always exist, matched by an almost tight nonexistence bound of $\tildeΘ(n)$ which we can again transform into an NP-completeness proof for the decision problem.
Computing an equilibrium in congestion games can be challenging when the number of players is large. Yet, it is a problem to be addressed in practice, for instance to forecast the state of the system and be able to control it. In this work, we analyze the case of generalized atomic congestion games, with coupling constraints, and with players that are heterogeneous through their action sets and their utility functions. We obtain an approximation of the variational Nash equilibria---a notion generalizing Nash equilibria in the presence of coupling constraints---of a large atomic congestion game…
We study uniqueness of Nash equilibria in atomic splittable congestion games and derive a uniqueness result based on polymatroid theory: when the strategy space of every player is a bidirectional flow polymatroid, then equilibria are unique. Bidirectional flow polymatroids are introduced as a subclass of polymatroids possessing certain exchange properties. We show that important cases such as base orderable matroids can be recovered as a special case of bidirectional flow polymatroids. On the other hand we show that matroidal set systems are in some sense necessary to guarantee uniqueness of e…
Congestion games constitute an important class of games in which computing an exact or even approximate pure Nash equilibrium is in general {\sf PLS}-complete. We present a surprisingly simple polynomial-time algorithm that computes O(1)-approximate Nash equilibria in these games. In particular, for congestion games with linear latency functions, our algorithm computes $(2+ε)$-approximate pure Nash equilibria in time polynomial in the number of players, the number of resources and $1/ε$. It also applies to games with polynomial latency functions with constant maximum degree $d$; there, the app…
In this work, we seek a more refined understanding of the complexity of local optimum computation for Max-Cut and pure Nash equilibrium (PNE) computation for congestion games with weighted players and linear latency functions. We show that computing a PNE of linear weighted congestion games is PLS-complete either for very restricted strategy spaces, namely when player strategies are paths on a series-parallel network with a single origin and destination, or for very restricted latency functions, namely when the latency on each resource is equal to the congestion. Our results reveal a remarkabl…
We study the computation of approximate pure Nash equilibria in Shapley value (SV) weighted congestion games, introduced in [19]. This class of games considers weighted congestion games in which Shapley values are used as an alternative (to proportional shares) for distributing the total cost of each resource among its users. We focus on the interesting subclass of such games with polynomial resource cost functions and present an algorithm that computes approximate pure Nash equilibria with a polynomial number of strategy updates. Since computing a single strategy update is hard, we apply samp…
This paper concerns computing approximate pure Nash equilibria in weighted congestion games, which has been shown to be PLS-complete. With the help of $\hatΨ$-game and approximate potential functions, we propose two algorithms based on best response dynamics, and prove that they efficiently compute $\fracρ{1-ε}$-approximate pure Nash equilibria for $ρ= d!$ and $ρ=\frac{2\cdot W\cdot(d+1)}{2\cdot W+d+1}\le {d + 1}$, respectively, when the weighted congestion game has polynomial latency functions of degree at most $d \ge 1$ and players' weights are bounded from above by a constant $W \ge 1$. Thi…
In this paper, we compute $ε$-approximate Nash equilibria in atomic splittable polymatroid congestion games with convex Lipschitz continuous cost functions. The main approach relies on computing a pure Nash equilibrium for an associated integrally-splittable congestion game, where players can only split their demand in integral multiples of a common packet size. It is known that one can compute pure Nash equilibria for integrally-splittable congestion games within a running time that is pseudo-polynomial in the aggregated demand of the players. As the main contribution of this paper, we decide…
We consider structural and algorithmic questions related to the Nash dynamics of weighted congestion games. In weighted congestion games with linear latency functions, the existence of (pure Nash) equilibria is guaranteed by potential function arguments. Unfortunately, this proof of existence is inefficient and computing equilibria is such games is a {\sf PLS}-hard problem. The situation gets worse when superlinear latency functions come into play; in this case, the Nash dynamics of the game may contain cycles and equilibria may not even exist. Given these obstacles, we consider approximate eq…
Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik（马克斯·普朗克信息学研究所）；University of Athens（雅典大学）；Patras University（帕特雷大学）
We study the performance of approximate Nash equilibria for linear congestion games. We consider how much the price of anarchy worsens and how much the price of stability improves as a function of the approximation factor $ε$. We give (almost) tight upper and lower bounds for both the price of anarchy and the price of stability for atomic and non-atomic congestion games. Our results not only encompass and generalize the existing results of exact equilibria to $ε$-Nash equilibria, but they also provide a unified approach which reveals the common threads of the atomic and non-atomic price of ana…
We study natural improvement dynamics in weighted congestion games with polynomial latencies of maximum degree $d\geq 1$. We focus on two problems regarding the existence and efficiency of approximate pure Nash equilibria, with a reasonable small approximation factor, in these games. By exploiting a simple technique, we firstly show that such a game always admits a $d$-approximate potential function. This implies that every sequence of $d$-approximate improvement moves by the players leads to a $d$-approximate pure Nash equilibrium. As a corollary, we also obtain that, under mild assumptions o…
In this paper, we introduce malicious Bayesian congestion games as an extension to congestion games where players might act in a malicious way. In such a game each player has two types. Either the player is a rational player seeking to minimize her own delay, or - with a certain probability - the player is malicious in which case her only goal is to disturb the other players as much as possible. We show that such games do in general not possess a Bayesian Nash equilibrium in pure strategies (i.e. a pure Bayesian Nash equilibrium). Moreover, given a game, we show that it is NP-complete to decid…
We present a deterministic polynomial-time algorithm for computing $d^{d+o(d)}$-approximate (pure) Nash equilibria in (proportional sharing) weighted congestion games with polynomial cost functions of degree at most $d$. This is an exponential improvement of the approximation factor with respect to the previously best deterministic algorithm. An appealing additional feature of the algorithm is that it only uses best-improvement steps in the actual game, as opposed to the previously best algorithms, that first had to transform the game itself. Our algorithm is an adaptation of the seminal algor…
Congestion games constitute an important class of games to model resource allocation by different users. As computing an exact or even an approximate pure Nash equilibrium is in general PLS-complete, Caragiannis et al. (2011) present a polynomial-time algorithm that computes a ($2 + ε$)-approximate pure Nash equilibria for games with linear cost functions and further results for polynomial cost functions. We show that this factor can be improved to $(1.61+ε)$ and further improved results for polynomial cost functions, by a seemingly simple modification to their algorithm by allowing for the co…
We study a new class of games which generalizes congestion games and its bottleneck variant. We introduce congestion games with mixed objectives to model network scenarios in which players seek to optimize for latency and bandwidths alike. We characterize the existence of pure Nash equilibria (PNE) and the convergence of improvement dynamics. For games that do not possess PNE we give bounds on the approximation ratio of approximate pure Nash equilibria.
In this work we study of competitive situations among users of a set of global resources. More precisely we study the effect of cost policies used by these resources in the convergence time to a pure Nash equilibrium. The work is divided in two parts. In the theoretical part we prove lower and upper bounds on the convergence time for various cost policies. We then implement all the models we study and provide some experimental results. These results follows the theoretical with one exception which is the most interesting among the experiments. In the case of coalitional users the theoretical u…
We study the repeated congestion game, in which multiple populations of players share resources, and make, at each iteration, a decentralized decision on which resources to utilize. We investigate the following question: given a model of how individual players update their strategies, does the resulting dynamics of strategy profiles converge to the set of Nash equilibria of the one-shot game? We consider in particular a model in which players update their strategies using algorithms with sublinear discounted regret. We show that the resulting sequence of strategy profiles converges to the set …
This paper studies the effects of introducing altruistic agents into atomic congestion games. Altruistic behavior is modeled by a trade-off between selfish and social objectives. In particular, we assume agents optimize a linear combination of personal delay of a strategy and the resulting increase in social cost. Our model can be embedded in the framework of congestion games with player-specific latency functions. Stable states are the Nash equilibria of these games, and we examine their existence and the convergence of sequential best-response dynamics. Previous work shows that for symmetric…
The model of congestion games is widely used to analyze games related to traffic and communication. A central property of these games is that they are potential games and hence posses a pure Nash equilibrium. In reality it is often the case that some players cooperatively decide on their joint action in order to maximize the coalition's total utility. This is by modeled by Coalitional Congestion Games. Typical settings include truck drivers who work for the same shipping company, or routers that belong to the same ISP. The formation of coalitions will typically imply that the resulting coaliti…
We extend the study of the complexity of finding an $\eps$-approximate Nash equilibrium in congestion games from the case of positive delay functions to delays of arbitrary sign. We first prove that in symmetric games with $α$-bounded jump the $\eps$-Nash dynamic converges in polynomial time when all delay functions are negative, similarly to the case of positive delays. We then establish a hardness result for symmetric games with $α$-bounded jump and with arbitrary delay functions: in that case finding an $\eps$-Nash equilibrium becomes $\PLS$-complete.
This paper shows that the PoA in non-atomic congestion games is H{ö}lder continuous w.r.t. combined disturbance on cost functions and demands. We then apply this result to the convergence analysis of the PoA.
We put forward a new model of congestion games where agents have uncertainty over the routes used by other agents. We take a non-probabilistic approach, assuming that each agent knows that the number of agents using an edge is within a certain range. Given this uncertainty, we model agents who either minimize their worst-case cost (WCC) or their worst-case regret (WCR), and study implications on equilibrium existence, convergence through adaptive play, and efficiency. Under the WCC behavior the game reduces to a modified congestion game, and welfare improves when agents have moderate uncertain…
On the Fragility of Worst-Case Nash Equilibria in Atomic Congestion Games
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs（科罗拉多大学科罗拉多斯普林斯分校）；Politecnico di Torino（都灵理工大学）；Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College（达特茅斯学院塔克工程学院）
With increasing renewable penetration in power systems, a prominent challenge in efficient and reliable power system operation is handling the uncertainties inherent in the renewable generation. In this paper, we propose a simple two-settlement market mechanism in which renewable power producers (RPPs) participate, so that a) the independent system operator (ISO) does not need to consider the uncertainties of the renewables in its economic dispatch, and yet b) the market equilibrium is shown to approach social efficiency as if the ISO solves a stochastic optimization taking into account all th…
This paper studies strategic decentralization in binary choice composite network congestion games. A player decentralizes if she lets some autonomous agents to decide respectively how to send different parts of her stock from the origin to the destination. This paper shows that, with convex, strictly increasing and differentiable arc cost functions, an atomic splittable player always has an optimal unilateral decentralization strategy. Besides, unilateral decentralization gives her the same advantage as being the leader in a Stackelberg congestion game. Finally, unilateral decentralization of …
In this paper, we present and analyze the properties of a new class of games - the spatial congestion game (SCG), which is a generalization of the classical congestion game (CG). In a classical congestion game, multiple users share the same set of resources and a user's payoff for using any resource is a function of the total number of users sharing it. As a potential game, this game enjoys some very appealing properties, including the existence of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium (NE) and that every improvement path is finite and leads to such a NE (also called the finite improvement property…
We show that computing an equilibrium in atomic splittable congestion games with player-specific affine cost functions $l_{e,i}(x) = a_{e,i} x + b_{e,i}$ is $\mathsf{PPAD}$-complete. To prove that the problem is contained in $\mathsf{PPAD}$, we develop a homotopy method that traces an equilibrium for varying flow demands of the players. A key technique for this method is to describe the evolution of the equilibrium locally by a novel block Laplacian matrix. Using the properties of this matrix give rise to a path following formulation for computing an equilibrium where states correspond to supp…
One of the main results shown through Roughgarden's notions of smooth games and robust price of anarchy is that, for any sum-bounded utilitarian social function, the worst-case price of anarchy of coarse correlated equilibria coincides with that of pure Nash equilibria in the class of weighted congestion games with non-negative and non-decreasing latency functions and that such a value can always be derived through the, so called, smoothness argument. We significantly extend this result by proving that, for a variety of (even non-sum-bounded) utilitarian and egalitarian social functions and fo…
We describe a new coordination mechanism for non-atomic congestion games that leads to a (selfish) social cost which is arbitrarily close to the non-selfish optimal. This mechanism does not incur any additional extra cost, like tolls, which are usually differentiated from the social cost as expressed in terms of delays only.
We study a model of selfish resource allocation that seeks to incorporate dependencies among resources as they exist in modern networked environments. Our model is inspired by utility functions with constant elasticity of substitution (CES) which is a well-studied model in economics. We consider congestion games with different aggregation functions. In particular, we study $L_p$ norms and analyze the existence and complexity of (approximate) pure Nash equilibria. Additionally, we give an almost tight characterization based on monotonicity properties to describe the set of aggregation functions…
We consider a non-atomic congestion game where each decision maker performs selfish optimization over states of a common MDP. The decision makers optimize for their own expected costs, and influence each other through congestion effects on the state-action costs. We analyze on the sensitivity of MDP congestion game equilibria to uncertainty and perturbations in the state-action costs by applying an implicit function type analysis. The occurrence of a stochastic Braess paradox is defined, analyzed based on sensitivity of game equilibria and demonstrated in simulation. We further analyze how the…
This paper provides a comprehensive convergence analysis of the PoA of both pure and mixed Nash equilibria in atomic congestion games with unsplittable demands.
We consider the question of whether, and in what sense, Wardrop equilibria provide a good approximation for Nash equilibria in atomic unsplittable congestion games with a large number of small players. We examine two different definitions of small players. In the first setting, we consider games where each player's weight is small. We prove that when the number of players goes to infinity and their weights to zero, the random flows in all (mixed) Nash equilibria for the finite games converge in distribution to the set of Wardrop equilibria of the corresponding nonatomic limit game. In the seco…
Markov decision process (MDP) congestion game is an extension of classic congestion games, where a continuous population of selfish agents solves Markov decision processes with congestion: the payoff of a strategy decreases as more population uses it. We draw parallels between key concepts from capacitated congestion games and MDP. In particular, we show that population mass constraints in MDP congestion games are equivalent to imposing tolls/incentives on the reward function, which can be utilized by social planners to achieve auxiliary objectives. We demonstrate such methods in a simulated S…
We study the impact of player capability on social welfare in congestion games. We introduce a new game, the Distance-bounded Network Congestion game (DNC), as the basis of our study. DNC is a symmetric network congestion game with a bound on the number of edges each player can use. We show that DNC is PLS-complete in contrast to standard symmetric network congestion games which are in P. To model different player capabilities, we propose using programs in a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) to compactly represent player strategies. We define a player's capability as the maximum size of the progr…
A key challenge in responding to public health crises such as COVID-19 is the difficulty of predicting the results of feedback interconnections between the disease and society. As a step towards understanding these interconnections, we pose a simple game-theoretic model of a global pandemic in which individuals can choose where to live, and we investigate the global behavior that may emerge as a result of individuals reacting locally to the competing costs of isolation and infection. We study the game-theoretic equilibria that emerge from this setup when the population is composed of either se…
We introduce the notion of exchangeable equilibria of a symmetric bimatrix game, defined as those correlated equilibria in which players' strategy choices are conditionally independently and identically distributed given some hidden variable. We give several game-theoretic interpretations and a version of the "revelation principle". Geometrically, the set of exchangeable equilibria is convex and lies between the symmetric Nash equilibria and the symmetric correlated equilibria. Exchangeable equilibria can achieve higher expected utility than symmetric Nash equilibria.
We study {\em bottleneck congestion games} where the social cost is determined by the worst congestion of any resource. These games directly relate to network routing problems and also job-shop scheduling problems. In typical bottleneck congestion games, the utility costs of the players are determined by the worst congested resources that they use. However, the resulting Nash equilibria are inefficient, since the price of anarchy is proportional on the number of resources which can be high. Here we show that we can get smaller price of anarchy with the bottleneck social cost metric. We introdu…
We give exponential lower bounds on the Price of Stability (PoS) of weighted congestion games with polynomial cost functions. In particular, for any positive integer $d$ we construct rather simple games with cost functions of degree at most $d$ which have a PoS of at least $\varOmega(Φ_d)^{d+1}$, where $Φ_d\sim d/\ln d$ is the unique positive root of equation $x^{d+1}=(x+1)^d$. This almost closes the huge gap between $\varTheta(d)$ and $Φ_d^{d+1}$. Our bound extends also to network congestion games. We further show that the PoS remains exponential even for singleton games. More generally, we p…
Network congestion games are a convenient model for reasoning about routing problems in a network: agents have to move from a source to a target vertex while avoiding congestion, measured as a cost depending on the number of players using the same link. Network congestion games have been extensively studied over the last 40 years, while their extension with timing constraints were considered more recently. Most of the results on network congestion games consider blind strategies: they are static, and do not adapt to the strategies selected by the other players. We extend the recent results of …
Game-theoretical approach to the analysis of parallel algorithms is proposed. The approach is based on presentation of the parallel computing as a congestion game. In the game processes compete for resources such as core of a central processing unit and a communication subsystem. There are players, resources and payoffs (time delays) of players which depend on resources usage. Comparative analysis of various optimality principles in the proposed model may be performed.
We present efficient approximation algorithms for finding Nash equilibria in anonymous games, that is, games in which the players utilities, though different, do not differentiate between other players. Our results pertain to such games with many players but few strategies. We show that any such game has an approximate pure Nash equilibrium, computable in polynomial time, with approximation O(s^2 L), where s is the number of strategies and L is the Lipschitz constant of the utilities. Finally, we show that there is a PTAS for finding an epsilon
The travel costs of the players (travelers) in anonymous congestion games depend on their choices of routes and also on the states of the transportation network such as incidents, weather, and road work. In this extended abstract, we consider an incomplete-information environment in which the realizations of the states are unobserved by the travelers. We study how a planner can incentivize the travelers to behave in her favor by strategically designing what and how the travelers get informed about the realizations of the states.
We prove that differential Nash equilibria are generic amongst local Nash equilibria in continuous zero-sum games. That is, there exists an open-dense subset of zero-sum games for which local Nash equilibria are non-degenerate differential Nash equilibria. The result extends previous results to the zero-sum setting, where we obtain even stronger results; in particular, we show that local Nash equilibria are generically hyperbolic critical points. We further show that differential Nash equilibria of zero-sum games are structurally stable. The purpose for presenting these extensions is the recen…
We investigate a new class of congestion games, called Totally Unimodular (TU) Congestion Games, where the players' strategies are binary vectors inside polyhedra defined by totally unimodular constraint matrices. Network congestion games belong to this class. In the symmetric case, when all players have the same strategy set, we design an algorithm that finds an optimal aggregated strategy and then decomposes it into the single players' strategies. This approach yields strongly polynomial-time algorithms to (i) find a pure Nash equilibrium, and (ii) compute a socially optimal state, if the de…
The rank of a bimatrix game (A,B) is the rank of the matrix A+B. We give a construction of rank-1 games with exponentially many equilibria, which answers an open problem by Kannan and Theobald (2010).
We study the issues of existence and inefficiency of pure Nash equilibria in linear congestion games with altruistic social context, in the spirit of the model recently proposed by de Keijzer {\em et al.} \cite{DSAB13}. In such a framework, given a real matrix $Γ=(γ_{ij})$ specifying a particular social context, each player $i$ aims at optimizing a linear combination of the payoffs of all the players in the game, where, for each player $j$, the multiplicative coefficient is given by the value $γ_{ij}$. We give a broad characterization of the social contexts for which pure Nash equilibria are a…
We study the problem of finding robust equilibria in multiplayer concurrent games with mean payoff objectives. A $(k,t)$-robust equilibrium is a strategy profile such that no coalition of size $k$ can improve the payoff of one its member by deviating, and no coalition of size $t$ can decrease the payoff of other players. We are interested in pure equilibria, that is, solutions that can be implemented using non-randomized strategies. We suggest a general transformation from multiplayer games to two-player games such that pure equilibria in the first game correspond to winning strategies in the …
TOBB University of Economics and Technology（TOBB经济与技术大学）；Özyeğin University（厄兹耶因大学）
We study the subclass of singleton congestion games with identical and increasing cost functions, i.e., each agent tries to utilize from the least crowded resource in her accessible subset of resources. Our main contribution is a novel approach for proving the existence of equilibrium outcomes that are resilient to weakly improving deviations: $(i)$ by singletons (Nash equilibria), $(ii)$ by the grand coalition (Pareto efficiency), and $(iii)$ by coalitions with respect to an a priori given partition coalition structure (partition equilibria). To the best of our knowledge, this is the stronges…
We provide a unifying, black-box tool for establishing existence of approximate equilibria in weighted congestion games and, at the same time, bounding their Price of Stability. Our framework can handle resources with general costs--including, in particular, decreasing ones--and is formulated in terms of a set of parameters which are determined via elementary analytic properties of the cost functions. We demonstrate the power of our tool by applying it to recover the recent result of Caragiannis and Fanelli [ICALP'19] for polynomial congestion games; improve upon the bounds for fair cost shari…
Two-player games on graphs provide the theoretical frame- work for many important problems such as reactive synthesis. While the traditional study of two-player zero-sum games has been extended to multi-player games with several notions of equilibria, they are decidable only for perfect-information games, whereas several applications require imperfect-information games. In this paper we propose a new notion of equilibria, called doomsday equilibria, which is a strategy profile such that all players satisfy their own objective, and if any coalition of players deviates and violates even one of t…
