Cost Sharing in the Aspnes Inoculation Model

TL;DR

This paper explores how cost sharing strategies in the Aspnes network inoculation model can significantly reduce the overall cost of equilibrium, improving efficiency in large networks.

Contribution

It demonstrates that cost sharing can improve the optimal equilibrium cost by a factor of O(√n) in the Aspnes inoculation model.

Findings

Cost sharing reduces equilibrium costs in network inoculation.

Improvement factor scales with the square root of network size.

Provides theoretical bounds on cost sharing benefits.

Abstract

We consider the use of cost sharing in the Aspnes model of network inoculation, showing that this can improve the cost of the optimal equilibrium by a factor of $O(\sqrt{n})$ in a network of $n$ nodes.