Abstract
Network congestion games are a simple model for reasoning about routing problems in a network. They are a very popular topic in algorithmic game theory, and a huge amount of results about existence and (in)efficiency of equilibrium strategy profiles in those games have been obtained over the last 20 years.
In particular, the price of anarchy has been defined as an important notion for measuring the inefficiency of Nash equilibria. Generic bounds have been obtained for the price of anarchy over various classes of networks, but little attention has been put on the effective computation of this value for a given network. This talk presents recent results on this problem in different settings.
This paper is based on joint works with Nathalie Bertrand, Aline Goeminne, Suman Sadhukhan, Ocan Sankur, and benefited from discussions with Arthur Dumas and Stéphane Le Roux. These works have received fundings from ANR projects TickTac and BisoUS.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alur, R., Dill, D.L.: A theory of timed automata. Theor. Comput. Sci. 126(2), 183–235 (1994)
Anshelevich, E., Dasgupta, A., Kleinberg, J., Tardos, É., Wexler, T., Roughgarden, T.: The price of stability for network design with fair cost allocation. In: FOCS 2004, pp.. 295–304. IEEE Comp. Soc. Press, (2004). https://doi.org/10.1109/FOCS.2004.68
Avni, G., Guha, S., Kupferman, O.: Timed network games. In: MFCS 2017. LIPIcs, vol. 84, pp. 37:1–37:16. Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017). https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2017.37
Avni, G., Guha, S., Kupferman, O.: Timed network games with clocks. In: MFCS 2018. LIPIcs. vol. 117, pp. 23:1–23:18. Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018). https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2018.23
Avni, G., Henzinger, T.A., Kupferman, O.: Dynamic resource allocation games. In: Gairing, M., Savani, R. (eds.) SAGT 2016. LNCS, vol. 9928, pp. 153–166. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53354-3_13
Awerbuch, B., Azar, Y., Epstein, A.: The price of routing unsplittable flow. In: STOC 2005, pp. 57–66. ACM Press (2005). https://doi.org/10.1145/1060590.1060599
Bertrand, N., Markey, N., Sadhukhan, S., Sankur, O.: Dynamic network congestion games. In: FSTTCS 2020. LIPIcs 182, pp. 40:1–40:16. Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020). https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.40
Bertrand, N., Markey, N., Sadhukhan, S., Sankur, O.: Semilinear representations for series-parallel atomic congestion games. In: FSTTCS 2022. LIPIcs, vol. 250, pp. 32:1–32:20. Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022). https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.32
Brihaye, Th., Bruyère, V., Goeminne, A., Raskin, J.-F., Van den Bogaard, M.: The complexity of subgame perfect equilibria in quantitative reachability games. In CONCUR 2019. LIPIcs, vol. 140, pp. 13:1–13:16. Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019). https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2019.13
Christodoulou, G., Koutsoupias, E.: The price of anarchy of finite congestion games. In STOC 2005, pp. 67–73. ACM Press (2005). https://doi.org/10.1145/1060590.1060600
Colini-Baldeschi, R., Cominetti, R., Mertikopoulos, P., Scarsini, M.: When is selfish routing bad? The price of anarchy in light and heavy traffic. Operations Res. 68(2):411–434 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2019.1894
Cominetti, R., Dose, V., Scarsini, M.: The price of anarchy in routing games as a function of the demand. Math. Program (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-021-01701-7 (to appear)
Correa, J.R., de Jong, J., de Keizer, B., Uetz, M.: The inefficiency of Nash and subgame-perfect equilibria for network routing. Math. Operat. Res. 44(4), 1286–1303 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2018.0968
Fabrikant, A., Papadimitriou, Ch.H., Talwar, K.: The complexity of pure Nash equilibria. In STOC 2004, pp. 604–612. ACM Press (2004). https://doi.org/10.1145/1007352.1007445
Fotakis, D.: Congestion games with linearly independent paths: convergence time and price of anarchy. In: Monien, B., Schroeder, U.-P. (eds.) SAGT 2008. LNCS, vol. 4997, pp. 33–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-79309-0_5
Fotakis, D., Kontogiannis, S., Spirakis, P.G.: Selfish unsplittable flows. Theor. Comput. Sci. 348(2-3), 226–239 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2005.09.024
Ginsburg, S., Spanier, E.: Semigroups, Presburger formulas, and languages. Pac. J. Math. 16(2), 285–296 (1966)
Goeminne, A., Markey, N., and Sankur, O.: Non-blind strategies in timed network congestion games. In: FORMATS 2022. LNCS, vol. 13465, pp. 183–199. Springer (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15839-1_11
Hao, B., Michini, C.: Inefficiency of pure nash equilibria in series-parallel network congestion games. In: WINE 2022, LNCS, vol. 13778, pp. 3–20. Springer (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22832-2_1
Hoefer, M., Mirrokni, V.S., Röglin, H., Teng, S.-H.: Competitive routing over time. Theor. Comput. Sci. 412(39), 5420–5432 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2011.05.055
Koch, R., Skutella, M.: Nash equilibria and the price of anarchy for flows over time. Theory Comput. Syst. 49(1), 71–97 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-010-9299-y
Kontogiannis, S., Spirakis, P.: Atomic selfish routing in networks: a survey. In: Deng, X., Ye, Y. (eds.) WINE 2005. LNCS, vol. 3828, pp. 989–1002. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/11600930_100
Koutsoupias, E., Papadimitriou, C.: Worst-case equilibria. In: Meinel, C., Tison, S. (eds.) STACS 1999. LNCS, vol. 1563, pp. 404–413. Springer, Heidelberg (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49116-3_38
Koutsoupias, E., Papakonstantinopoulou, K.: Contention issues in congestion games. In: Czumaj, A., Mehlhorn, K., Pitts, A., Wattenhofer, R. (eds.) ICALP 2012. LNCS, vol. 7392, pp. 623–635. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31585-5_55
Mavronicolas, M., Spirakis, P.G.: The price of selfish routing. Algorithmica 48(1), 91–126 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00453-006-0056-1
Paes Leme, R., Syrgkanis, V., Tardos, É.: The curse of simultaneity. In: ITCS 2012, pp. 60–67. ACM Press (2012). https://doi.org/10.1145/2090236.2090242
Pigou, A.C.: The economics of welfare. MacMillan and Co. (1920)
R. W. Rosenthal. A class of games possessing pure-strategy Nash equilibria. International Journal of Game Theory, 2(1):65–67, 1973
Rosenthal, R.W.: The network equilibrium problem in integers. Networks 3(1), 53–59 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1002/net.3230030104
Roughgarden, T.: Routing games. In: Algorithmic Game Theory, chapter 18, pp. 461–486. Cambridge University Press (2007)
Roughgarden, T., Tardos, É.: How bad is selfish routing? J. of the ACM 49(2), 236–259 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1145/506147.506153
Roughgarden, T., Tardos, É.: Bounding the inefficiency of equilibria in non-atomic congestion games. Games Econ. Behav. 47(2), 389–403 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2003.06.004
Sadhukhan, S.: A Verification Viewpoint on Network Congestion Games. PhD thesis, Université Rennes 1, France (2021)
Sperber, H.: How to find Nash equilibria with extreme total latency in network congestion games? Math. Methods Operat. Res. 71(2), 245–265 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00186-009-0293-6
Valdes, J., Tarjan, R.E., Lawler, E.L.: The recognition of series-parallel digraphs. In STOC 1979, pp. 1–12. ACM Press (1979). https://doi.org/10.1145/800135.804393
Wardrop, J.G.: Some theoretical aspects of road traffic research. Proc. Inst. Civil Eng. 1(3), 325–362 (1952). https://doi.org/10.1680/ipeds.1952.11259
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Markey, N. (2023). Computing the Price of Anarchy in Atomic Network Congestion Games (Invited Talk). In: Petrucci, L., Sproston, J. (eds) Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems. FORMATS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14138. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42626-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42626-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-42625-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-42626-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)