scholarly journals Pure Nash Equilibria in Online Fair Division

Author(s):  
Martin Aleksandrov ◽  
Toby Walsh

We consider a fair division setting in which items arrive one by one and are allocated to agents via two existing mechanisms: LIKE and BALANCED LIKE. The LIKE mechanism is strategy-proof whereas the BALANCED LIKE mechanism is not. Whilst LIKE is strategy-proof, we show that it is not group strategy-proof. Indeed, our first main result is that no online mechanism is group strategy-proof. We then focus on pure Nash equilibria of these two mechanisms. Our second main result is that computing a pure Nash equilibrium is tractable for LIKE and intractable for BALANCED LIKE. Our third main result is that there could be multiple such profiles and counting them is also intractable even when we restrict our attention to equilibria with a specific property (e.g. envy-freeness, Pareto efficiency).

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 357-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Gottlob ◽  
G. Greco ◽  
F. Scarcello

We investigate complexity issues related to pure Nash equilibria of strategic games. We show that, even in very restrictive settings, determining whether a game has a pure Nash Equilibrium is NP-hard, while deciding whether a game has a strong Nash equilibrium is SigmaP2-complete. We then study practically relevant restrictions that lower the complexity. In particular, we are interested in quantitative and qualitative restrictions of the way each player's payoff depends on moves of other players. We say that a game has small neighborhood if the utility function for each player depends only on (the actions of) a logarithmically small number of other players. The dependency structure of a game G can be expressed by a graph DG(G) or by a hypergraph H(G). By relating Nash equilibrium problems to constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), we show that if G has small neighborhood and if H(G) has bounded hypertree width (or if DG(G) has bounded treewidth), then finding pure Nash and Pareto equilibria is feasible in polynomial time. If the game is graphical, then these problems are LOGCFL-complete and thus in the class NC2 of highly parallelizable problems.


2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 117-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN GAIRING ◽  
THOMAS LÜCKING ◽  
MARIOS MAVRONICOLAS ◽  
BURKHARD MONIEN

In the model of restricted parallel links, n users must be routed on m parallel links under the restriction that the link for each user be chosen from a certain set of allowed links for the user. In a (pure) Nash equilibrium, no user may improve its own Individual Cost (latency) by unilaterally switching to another link from its set of allowed links. The Price of Anarchy is a widely adopted measure of the worst-case loss (relative to optimum) in system performance (maximum latency) incurred in a Nash equilibrium. In this work, we present a comprehensive collection of bounds on Price of Anarchy for the model of restricted parallel links and for the special case of pure Nash equilibria. Specifically, we prove: • For the case of identical users and identical links, the Price of Anarchy is [Formula: see text]. • For the case of identical users, the Price of Anarchy is [Formula: see text]. • For the case of identical links, the Price of Anarchy is [Formula: see text], which is asymptotically tight. • For the most general case of arbitrary users and related links, the Price of Anarchy is at least m – 1 and less than m. The shown bounds reveal the dependence of the Price of Anarchy on n and m for all possible assumptions on users and links.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Harks ◽  
Max Klimm ◽  
Jannik Matuschke

This paper studies the existence of pure Nash equilibria in resource graph games, a general class of strategic games succinctly representing the players’ private costs. These games are defined relative to a finite set of resources and the strategy set of each player corresponds to a set of subsets of resources. The cost of a resource is an arbitrary function of the load vector of a certain subset of resources. As our main result, we give complete characterizations of the cost functions guaranteeing the existence of pure Nash equilibria for weighted and unweighted players, respectively. For unweighted players, pure Nash equilibria are guaranteed to exist for any choice of the players’ strategy space if and only if the cost of each resource is an arbitrary function of the load of the resource itself and linear in the load of all other resources where the linear coefficients of mutual influence of different resources are symmetric. This implies in particular that for any other cost structure there is a resource graph game that does not have a pure Nash equilibrium. For weighted games where players have intrinsic weights and the cost of each resource depends on the aggregated weight of its users, pure Nash equilibria are guaranteed to exist if and only if the cost of a resource is linear in all resource loads, and the linear factors of mutual influence are symmetric, or there is no interaction among resources and the cost is an exponential function of the local resource load. We further discuss the computational complexity of pure Nash equilibria in resource graph games showing that for unweighted games where pure Nash equilibria are guaranteed to exist, it is coNP-complete to decide for a given strategy profile whether it is a pure Nash equilibrium. For general resource graph games, we prove that the decision whether a pure Nash equilibrium exists is Σ p 2 -complete.


2011 ◽  
pp. 65-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Rubinstein

The article considers some aspects of the patronized goods theory with respect to efficient and inefficient equilibria. The author analyzes specific features of patronized goods as well as their connection with market failures, and conjectures that they are related to the emergence of Pareto-inefficient Nash equilibria. The key problem is the analysis of the opportunities for transforming inefficient Nash equilibrium into Pareto-optimal Nash equilibrium for patronized goods by modifying the institutional environment. The paper analyzes social motivation for institutional modernization and equilibrium conditions in the generalized Wicksell-Lindahl model for patronized goods. The author also considers some applications of patronized goods theory to social policy issues.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Julian Gutierrez ◽  
Paul Harrenstein ◽  
Giuseppe Perelli ◽  
Michael Wooldridge

We define and investigate a novel notion of expressiveness for temporal logics that is based on game theoretic equilibria of multi-agent systems. We use iterated Boolean games as our abstract model of multi-agent systems [Gutierrez et al. 2013, 2015a]. In such a game, each agent  has a goal  , represented using (a fragment of) Linear Temporal Logic ( ) . The goal  captures agent  ’s preferences, in the sense that the models of  represent system behaviours that would satisfy  . Each player controls a subset of Boolean variables , and at each round in the game, player is at liberty to choose values for variables in any way that she sees fit. Play continues for an infinite sequence of rounds, and so as players act they collectively trace out a model for , which for every player will either satisfy or fail to satisfy their goal. Players are assumed to act strategically, taking into account the goals of other players, in an attempt to bring about computations satisfying their goal. In this setting, we apply the standard game-theoretic concept of (pure) Nash equilibria. The (possibly empty) set of Nash equilibria of an iterated Boolean game can be understood as inducing a set of computations, each computation representing one way the system could evolve if players chose strategies that together constitute a Nash equilibrium. Such a set of equilibrium computations expresses a temporal property—which may or may not be expressible within a particular fragment. The new notion of expressiveness that we formally define and investigate is then as follows: What temporal properties are characterised by the Nash equilibria of games in which agent goals are expressed in specific fragments of  ? We formally define and investigate this notion of expressiveness for a range of fragments. For example, a very natural question is the following: Suppose we have an iterated Boolean game in which every goal is represented using a particular fragment of : is it then always the case that the equilibria of the game can be characterised within ? We show that this is not true in general.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-147
Author(s):  
James Schummer ◽  
Rodrigo A. Velez

Strategy-proof allocation rules incentivize truthfulness in simultaneous move games, but real world mechanisms sometimes elicit preferences sequentially. Surprisingly, even when the underlying rule is strategy-proof and nonbossy, sequential elicitation can yield equilibria where agents have a strict incentive to be untruthful. This occurs only under incomplete information, when an agent anticipates that truthful reporting would signal false private information about others’ preferences. We provide conditions ruling out this phenomenon, guaranteeing all equilibrium outcomes to be welfare-equivalent to truthful ones. (JEL C73, D45, D82, D83)


Author(s):  
Amir Ali Ahmadi ◽  
Jeffrey Zhang

We explore the power of semidefinite programming (SDP) for finding additive ɛ-approximate Nash equilibria in bimatrix games. We introduce an SDP relaxation for a quadratic programming formulation of the Nash equilibrium problem and provide a number of valid inequalities to improve the quality of the relaxation. If a rank-1 solution to this SDP is found, then an exact Nash equilibrium can be recovered. We show that, for a strictly competitive game, our SDP is guaranteed to return a rank-1 solution. We propose two algorithms based on the iterative linearization of smooth nonconvex objective functions whose global minima by design coincide with rank-1 solutions. Empirically, we demonstrate that these algorithms often recover solutions of rank at most 2 and ɛ close to zero. Furthermore, we prove that if a rank-2 solution to our SDP is found, then a [Formula: see text]-Nash equilibrium can be recovered for any game, or a [Formula: see text]-Nash equilibrium for a symmetric game. We then show how our SDP approach can address two (NP-hard) problems of economic interest: finding the maximum welfare achievable under any Nash equilibrium, and testing whether there exists a Nash equilibrium where a particular set of strategies is not played. Finally, we show the connection between our SDP and the first level of the Lasserre/sum of squares hierarchy.


Econometrica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 1065-1098
Author(s):  
Drew Fudenberg ◽  
Giacomo Lanzani ◽  
Philipp Strack

We study how an agent learns from endogenous data when their prior belief is misspecified. We show that only uniform Berk–Nash equilibria can be long‐run outcomes, and that all uniformly strict Berk–Nash equilibria have an arbitrarily high probability of being the long‐run outcome for some initial beliefs. When the agent believes the outcome distribution is exogenous, every uniformly strict Berk–Nash equilibrium has positive probability of being the long‐run outcome for any initial belief. We generalize these results to settings where the agent observes a signal before acting.


2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (165) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Bozo Stojanovic

Market processes can be analyzed by means of dynamic games. In a number of dynamic games multiple Nash equilibria appear. These equilibria often involve no credible threats the implementation of which is not in the interests of the players making them. The concept of sub game perfect equilibrium rules out these situations by stating that a reasonable solution to a game cannot involve players believing and acting upon noncredible threats or promises. A simple way of finding the sub game perfect Nash equilibrium of a dynamic game is by using the principle of backward induction. To explain how this equilibrium concept is applied, we analyze the dynamic entry games.


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