The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Games with congestion-averse utilities

Games with congestion-averse utilities
Games with congestion-averse utilities
Congestion games—in which players strategically choose from a set of “resources” and derive utilities that depend on the congestion on each resource— are important in a wide range of applications. However, to date, such games have been constrained to use utility functions that are linear sums with respect to resources. To remove this restriction, this paper provides a significant generalisation to the case where a player’s payoff can be given by any real-valued function over the set of possible congestion vectors. Under reasonable assumptions on the structure of player strategy spaces, we constructively prove the existence of a pure strategy equilibrium for the very wide class of these generalised games in which player utility functions are congestion-averse—i.e., monotonic, submodular and independent of irrelevant alternatives. Although, as we show, these games do not admit a generalised ordinal potential function (and hence—the finite improvement property), any such game does possess a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies. A polynomial time algorithm for computing such an equilibrium is presented.
220-232
Byde, Andrew
cdfddb83-7ad2-4274-a048-343b1c0783d8
Polukarov, Mariya
bd2f0623-9e8a-465f-8b29-851387a64740
Jennings, Nick
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Byde, Andrew
cdfddb83-7ad2-4274-a048-343b1c0783d8
Polukarov, Mariya
bd2f0623-9e8a-465f-8b29-851387a64740
Jennings, Nick
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30

Byde, Andrew, Polukarov, Mariya and Jennings, Nick (2009) Games with congestion-averse utilities. Proc. 2nd Int. Sym. on Algorithmic Game Theory, Paphos, Cyprus. pp. 220-232 .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Congestion games—in which players strategically choose from a set of “resources” and derive utilities that depend on the congestion on each resource— are important in a wide range of applications. However, to date, such games have been constrained to use utility functions that are linear sums with respect to resources. To remove this restriction, this paper provides a significant generalisation to the case where a player’s payoff can be given by any real-valued function over the set of possible congestion vectors. Under reasonable assumptions on the structure of player strategy spaces, we constructively prove the existence of a pure strategy equilibrium for the very wide class of these generalised games in which player utility functions are congestion-averse—i.e., monotonic, submodular and independent of irrelevant alternatives. Although, as we show, these games do not admit a generalised ordinal potential function (and hence—the finite improvement property), any such game does possess a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies. A polynomial time algorithm for computing such an equilibrium is presented.

Text
CAGsSAGTfinal.pdf - Accepted Manuscript
Download (197kB)

More information

Published date: 2009
Venue - Dates: Proc. 2nd Int. Sym. on Algorithmic Game Theory, Paphos, Cyprus, 2009-01-01
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 267679
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/267679
PURE UUID: f129c58e-c070-41c0-af5d-937a207a93e1

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 17 Jul 2009 19:13
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 08:56

Export record

Contributors

Author: Andrew Byde
Author: Mariya Polukarov
Author: Nick Jennings

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×