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Braess’s Paradox in Large Sparse Graphs

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Internet and Network Economics (WINE 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 6484))

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Abstract

Braess’s paradox, in its original context, is the counter-intuitive observation that, without lessening demand, closing roads can improve traffic flow. With the explosion of distributed (selfish) routing situations understanding this paradox has become an important concern in a broad range of network design situations. However, the previous theoretical work on Braess’s paradox has focused on “designer” graphs or dense graphs, which are unrealistic in practical situations. In this work, we exploit the expansion properties of Erdős-Rényi random graphs to show that Braess’s paradox occurs when np ≥ c log(n) for some c > 1.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093

    Fan Chung & Stephen J. Young

Authors
  1. Fan Chung
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  2. Stephen J. Young
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA

    Amin Saberi

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Chung, F., Young, S.J. (2010). Braess’s Paradox in Large Sparse Graphs. In: Saberi, A. (eds) Internet and Network Economics. WINE 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6484. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17572-5_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17572-5_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17571-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17572-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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