License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.40
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-132811
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2020/13281/
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Bertrand, Nathalie ; Markey, Nicolas ; Sadhukhan, Suman ; Sankur, Ocan

Dynamic Network Congestion Games

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Abstract

Congestion games are a classical type of games studied in game theory, in which n players choose a resource, and their individual cost increases with the number of other players choosing the same resource. In network congestion games (NCGs), the resources correspond to simple paths in a graph, e.g. representing routing options from a source to a target. In this paper, we introduce a variant of NCGs, referred to as dynamic NCGs: in this setting, players take transitions synchronously, they select their next transitions dynamically, and they are charged a cost that depends on the number of players simultaneously using the same transition.
We study, from a complexity perspective, standard concepts of game theory in dynamic NCGs: social optima, Nash equilibria, and subgame perfect equilibria. Our contributions are the following: the existence of a strategy profile with social cost bounded by a constant is in PSPACE and NP-hard. (Pure) Nash equilibria always exist in dynamic NCGs; the existence of a Nash equilibrium with bounded cost can be decided in EXPSPACE, and computing a witnessing strategy profile can be done in doubly-exponential time. The existence of a subgame perfect equilibrium with bounded cost can be decided in 2EXPSPACE, and a witnessing strategy profile can be computed in triply-exponential time.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{bertrand_et_al:LIPIcs:2020:13281,
  author =	{Nathalie Bertrand and Nicolas Markey and Suman Sadhukhan and Ocan Sankur},
  title =	{{Dynamic Network Congestion Games}},
  booktitle =	{40th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2020)},
  pages =	{40:1--40:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-174-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{182},
  editor =	{Nitin Saxena and Sunil Simon},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2020/13281},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-132811},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2020.40},
  annote =	{Keywords: Congestion games, Nash equilibria, Subgame perfect equilibria, Complexity}
}

Keywords: Congestion games, Nash equilibria, Subgame perfect equilibria, Complexity
Collection: 40th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2020)
Issue Date: 2020
Date of publication: 04.12.2020

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