2 research outputs found
Informational Braess' Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
To systematically study the implications of additional information about
routes provided to certain users (e.g., via GPS-based route guidance systems),
we introduce a new class of congestion games in which users have differing
information sets about the available edges and can only use routes consisting
of edges in their information set. After defining the notion of Information
Constrained Wardrop Equilibrium (ICWE) for this class of congestion games and
studying its basic properties, we turn to our main focus: whether additional
information can be harmful (in the sense of generating greater equilibrium
costs/delays). We formulate this question in the form of Informational Braes'
Paradox (IBP), which extends the classic Braess' Paradox in traffic equilibria,
and asks whether users receiving additional information can become worse off.
We provide a comprehensive answer to this question showing that in any network
in the series of linearly independent (SLI) class, which is a strict subset of
series-parallel networks, IBP cannot occur, and in any network that is not in
the SLI class, there exists a configuration of edge-specific cost functions for
which IBP will occur. In the process, we establish several properties of the
SLI class of networks, which include the characterization of the complement of
the SLI class in terms of embedding a specific set of networks, and also an
algorithm which determines whether a graph is SLI in linear time. We further
prove that the worst-case inefficiency performance of ICWE is no worse than the
standard Wardrop equilibrium
The Efficiency of Best-Response Dynamics
Best response (BR) dynamics is a natural method by which players proceed
toward a pure Nash equilibrium via a local search method. The quality of the
equilibrium reached may depend heavily on the order by which players are chosen
to perform their best response moves. A {\em deviator rule} is a method for
selecting the next deviating player. We provide a measure for quantifying the
performance of different deviator rules. The {\em inefficiency} of a deviator
rule is the maximum ratio, over all initial profiles , between the
social cost of the worst equilibrium reachable by from and the social
cost of the best equilibrium reachable from . This inefficiency always lies
between and the {\em price of anarchy}.
We study the inefficiency of various deviator rules in network formation
games and job scheduling games (both are congestion games, where BR dynamics
always converges to a pure NE). For some classes of games, we compute optimal
deviator rules. Furthermore, we define and study a new class of deviator rules,
called {\em local} deviator rules. Such rules choose the next deviator as a
function of a restricted set of parameters, and satisfy a natural condition
called {\em independence of irrelevant players}. We present upper bounds on the
inefficiency of some local deviator rules, and also show that for some classes
of games, no local deviator rule can guarantee inefficiency lower than the
price of anarchy