Congestion games with player-specific constants

Marios Mavronicolas, Igal Milchtaich, Burkhard Monien, Karsten Tiemann

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

55 Scopus citations

Abstract

We consider a special case of weighted congestion games with player-specific latency functions where each player uses for each particular resource a fixed (non-decreasing) delay function together with a player-specific constant. For each particular resource, the resource-specific delay function and the playerspecific constant (for that resource) are composed by means of a group operation (such as addition or multiplication) into a player-specific latency function. We assume that the underlying group is a totally ordered abelian group. In this way, we obtain the class of weighted congestion games with player-specific constants; we observe that this class is contained in the new intuitive class of dominance weighted congestion games. We obtain the following results: Games on parallel links: Every unweighted congestion game has a generalized ordinal potential. There is a weighted congestion game with 3 players on 3 parallel links that does not have the Finite Best-Improvement Property. There is a particular best-improvement cycle for general weighted congestion games with player-specific latency functions and 3 players whose outlaw implies the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium. This cycle is indeed outlawed for dominance weighted congestion games with 3 players - and hence for weighted congestion games with player-specific constants and 3 players. Network congestion games: For unweighted symmetric network congestion games with player-specific additive constants, it is PLS-complete to find a pure Nash equilibrium. Arbitrary (non-network) congestion games: Every weighted congestion game with linear delay functions and player-specific additive constants has a weighted potential.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMathematical Foundations of Computer Science 2007 - 32nd International Symposium, MFCS 2007, Proceedings
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages633-644
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)9783540744559
DOIs
StatePublished - 2007
Event32nd International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, MFCS 2007 - Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic
Duration: 26 Aug 200731 Aug 2007

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume4708 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference32nd International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, MFCS 2007
Country/TerritoryCzech Republic
CityCesky Krumlov
Period26/08/0731/08/07

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