Equilibrium Computation in Resource Allocation Games

TL;DR

This paper presents the first polynomial time algorithms for computing pure Nash equilibria in atomic splittable congestion games and multimarket Cournot oligopolies, with implications for understanding equilibrium approximations.

Contribution

It introduces novel polynomial algorithms for equilibrium computation in both atomic splittable congestion games and Cournot oligopolies, including a transformation linking the two models.

Findings

First polynomial time algorithm for atomic splittable congestion games.

Transformation from Cournot to congestion games preserving equilibria.

New bounds on the difference between real and integral Cournot equilibria.

Abstract

We study the equilibrium computation problem for two classical resource allocation games: atomic splittable congestion games and multimarket Cournot oligopolies. For atomic splittable congestion games with singleton strategies and player-specific affine cost functions, we devise the first polynomial time algorithm computing a pure Nash equilibrium. Our algorithm is combinatorial and computes the exact equilibrium assuming rational input. The idea is to compute an equilibrium for an associated integrally-splittable singleton congestion game in which the players can only split their demands in integral multiples of a common packet size. While integral games have been considered in the literature before, no polynomial time algorithm computing an equilibrium was known. Also for this class, we devise the first polynomial time algorithm and use it as a building block for our main algorithm. We then develop a polynomial time computable transformation mapping a multimarket Cournot competition game with firm-specific affine price functions and quadratic costs to an associated atomic splittable congestion game as described above. The transformation preserves equilibria in either games and, thus, leads -- via our first algorithm -- to a polynomial time algorithm computing Cournot equilibria. Finally, our analysis for integrally-splittable games implies new bounds on the difference between real and integral Cournot equilibria. The bounds can be seen as a generalization of the recent bounds for single market oligopolies obtained by Todd [2016].