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Cooperation through social influence
We consider a simple and altruistic multiagent system in which the agents are eager to perform a collective task but where their real engagement depends on the willingness to perform the task of other influential agents. We model this scenario by an influence game, a cooperative simple game in which a team (or coalition) of players succeeds if it is able to convince enough agents to participate in the task (to vote in favor of a decision). We take the linear threshold model as the influence model. We show first the expressiveness of influence games showing that they capture the class of simple games. Then we characterize the computational complexity of various problems on influence games, including measures (length and width), values (Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf) and properties (of teams and players). Finally, we analyze those problems for some particular extremal cases, with respect to the propagation of influence, showing tighter complexity characterizations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft
Bounds for the Nakamura number
The Nakamura number is an appropriate invariant of a simple game to study the
existence of social equilibria and the possibility of cycles. For symmetric
quota games its number can be obtained by an easy formula. For some subclasses
of simple games the corresponding Nakamura number has also been characterized.
However, in general, not much is known about lower and upper bounds depending
of invariants on simple, complete or weighted games. Here, we survey such
results and highlight connections with other game theoretic concepts.Comment: 23 pages, 3 tables; a few more references adde
Hyperplane Separation Technique for Multidimensional Mean-Payoff Games
We consider both finite-state game graphs and recursive game graphs (or
pushdown game graphs), that can model the control flow of sequential programs
with recursion, with multi-dimensional mean-payoff objectives. In pushdown
games two types of strategies are relevant: global strategies, that depend on
the entire global history; and modular strategies, that have only local memory
and thus do not depend on the context of invocation. We present solutions to
several fundamental algorithmic questions and our main contributions are as
follows: (1) We show that finite-state multi-dimensional mean-payoff games can
be solved in polynomial time if the number of dimensions and the maximal
absolute value of the weight is fixed; whereas if the number of dimensions is
arbitrary, then problem is already known to be coNP-complete. (2) We show that
pushdown graphs with multi-dimensional mean-payoff objectives can be solved in
polynomial time. (3) For pushdown games under global strategies both single and
multi-dimensional mean-payoff objectives problems are known to be undecidable,
and we show that under modular strategies the multi-dimensional problem is also
undecidable (whereas under modular strategies the single dimensional problem is
NP-complete). We show that if the number of modules, the number of exits, and
the maximal absolute value of the weight is fixed, then pushdown games under
modular strategies with single dimensional mean-payoff objectives can be solved
in polynomial time, and if either of the number of exits or the number of
modules is not bounded, then the problem is NP-hard. (4) Finally we show that a
fixed parameter tractable algorithm for finite-state multi-dimensional
mean-payoff games or pushdown games under modular strategies with
single-dimensional mean-payoff objectives would imply the solution of the
long-standing open problem of fixed parameter tractability of parity games.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1201.282
A Three-Dimensional Voting System in Hong Kong
The voting system in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (Legco) is
sometimes unicameral and sometimes bicameral, depending on whether the bill is
proposed by the Hong Kong government. Therefore, although without any
representative within Legco, the Hong Kong government has certain degree of
legislative power --- as if there is a virtual representative of the Hong Kong
government within the Legco. By introducing such a virtual representative of
the Hong Kong government, we show that Legco is a three-dimensional voting
system. We also calculate two power indices of the Hong Kong government through
this virtual representative and consider the -dimension and the
-dimension of Legco. Finally, some implications of this Legco model to the
current constitutional reform in Hong Kong will be given
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