Abstract
We study the complexity of finding extreme pure Nash equilibria in symmetric (unweighted) network congestion games. In our context best and worst equilibria are those with minimum respectively maximum makespan. On series-parallel graphs a worst Nash equilibrium can be found by a Greedy approach while finding a best equilibrium is NP-hard. For a fixed number of users we give a pseudo-polynomial algorithm to find the best equilibrium in series-parallel networks. For general network topologies also finding a worst equilibrium is NP-hard.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Pigou, A.C.: The economics of welfare. Macmillan, Basingstoke (1920)
Papadimitriou, C.: Algorithms, games, and the internet. In: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing, pp. 749–753 (2001)
Koutsoupias, E., Papadimitriou, C.: Worst-case equilibria. In: Meinel, C., Tison, S. (eds.) STACS 1999. LNCS, vol. 1563, pp. 404–413. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Fotakis, D., Kontogiannis, S., Koutsoupias, E., Mavronicolas, M., Spirakis, P.: The structure and complexity of nash equilibria for a selfish routing game. In: Widmayer, P., Triguero, F., Morales, R., Hennessy, M., Eidenbenz, S., Conejo, R. (eds.) ICALP 2002. LNCS, vol. 2380, pp. 123–134. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Gairing, M., Lücking, T., Mavronicolas, M., Monien, B., Spirakis, P.: The structure and complexity of extreme nash equilibria. Theoretical Computer Science 343(1-2), 133–157 (2005)
Fischer, S., Vöcking, B.: On the structure and complexity of worst-case equilibria. Theororetical Computer Science 378(2), 165–174 (2007)
Epstein, A., Feldman, M., Mansour, Y.: Efficient graph topologies in network routing games. In: Joint Workshop on Economics of Networked Systems and Incentive-Based Computing (2007)
Rosenthal, R.W.: A class of games possessing pure-strategy nash equilibria. International Journal of Game Theory 2(1), 65–67 (1973)
Fabrikant, A., Papadimitriou, C., Talwar, K.: The complexity of pure nash equilibria. In: Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing, pp. 604–612 (2004)
Fotakis, D., Kontogiannis, S., Spirakis, P.: Symmetry in network congestion games: Pure equilibria and anarchy cost. In: Erlebach, T., Persinao, G. (eds.) WAOA 2005. LNCS, vol. 3879, pp. 161–175. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Garey, M.R., Johnson, D.S.: Computers and intractability. A guide to the theory of NP-completeness. A Series of Books in the Mathematical Sciences. W. H. Freeman & Co., New York (1979)
Bein, W.W., Brucker, P., Tamir, A.: Minimum cost flow algorithm for series-parallel networks. Discrete Applied Mathematics 10, 117–124 (1985)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gassner, E., Hatzl, J., Krumke, S.O., Sperber, H., Woeginger, G.J. (2008). How Hard Is It to Find Extreme Nash Equilibria in Network Congestion Games?. In: Papadimitriou, C., Zhang, S. (eds) Internet and Network Economics. WINE 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5385. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92185-1_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-92185-1_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-92184-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-92185-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)