The Computational Complexity of Multi-player Concave Games and Kakutani Fixed Points

TL;DR

This paper establishes the PPAD-completeness of a general computational formulation of Kakutani's Fixed Point theorem and applies it to determine the complexity of finding equilibria in concave games and Walrasian economies.

Contribution

It introduces a broad computational formulation of Kakutani's theorem and characterizes the complexity of equilibrium problems in economics and game theory.

Findings

Kakutani's Fixed Point problem is PPAD-complete.

Finding equilibria in concave games is PPAD-hard even with simple utilities.

Walrasian equilibrium with convex utilities is in PPAD.

Abstract

Kakutani's Fixed Point theorem is a fundamental theorem in topology with numerous applications in game theory and economics. Computational formulations of Kakutani exist only in special cases and are too restrictive to be useful in reductions. In this paper, we provide a general computational formulation of Kakutani's Fixed Point Theorem and we prove that it is PPAD-complete. As an application of our theorem we are able to characterize the computational complexity of the following fundamental problems: (1) Concave Games. Introduced by the celebrated works of Debreu and Rosen in the 1950s and 60s, concave $n$-person games have found many important applications in Economics and Game Theory. We characterize the computational complexity of finding an equilibrium in such games. We show that a general formulation of this problem belongs to PPAD, and that finding an equilibrium is PPAD-hard even for a rather restricted games of this kind: strongly-concave utilities that can be expressed as multivariate polynomials of a constant degree with axis aligned box constraints. (2) Walrasian Equilibrium. Using Kakutani's fixed point Arrow and Debreu we resolve an open problem related to Walras's theorem on the existence of price equilibria in general economies. There are many results about the PPAD-hardness of Walrasian equilibria, but the inclusion in PPAD is only known for piecewise linear utilities. We show that the problem with general convex utilities is in PPAD. Along the way we provide a Lipschitz continuous version of Berge's maximum theorem that may be of independent interest.