Enumeration of PLCP-orientations of the 4-cube

The linear complementarity problem (LCP) provides a unified approach to many problems such as linear programs, convex quadratic programs, and bimatrix games. The general LCP is known to be NP-hard, but there are some promising results that suggest the possibility that the LCP with a P-matrix (PLCP) may be polynomial-time solvable. However, no polynomial-time algorithm for the PLCP has been found yet and the computational complexity of the PLCP remains open. Simple principal pivoting (SPP) algorithms, also known as Bard-type algorithms, are candidates for polynomial-time algorithms for the PLCP. In 1978, Stickney and Watson interpreted SPP algorithms as a family of algorithms that seek the sink of unique-sink orientations of $n$-cubes. They performed the enumeration of the arising orientations of the $3$-cube, hereafter called PLCP-orientations. In this paper, we present the enumeration of PLCP-orientations of the $4$-cube.The enumeration is done via construction of oriented matroids generalizing P-matrices and realizability classification of oriented matroids.Some insights obtained in the computational experiments are presented as well

Network Cournot Competition

Cournot competition is a fundamental economic model that represents firms competing in a single market of a homogeneous good. Each firm tries to maximize its utility---a function of the production cost as well as market price of the product---by deciding on the amount of production. In today's dynamic and diverse economy, many firms often compete in more than one market simultaneously, i.e., each market might be shared among a subset of these firms. In this situation, a bipartite graph models the access restriction where firms are on one side, markets are on the other side, and edges demonstrate whether a firm has access to a market or not. We call this game \emph{Network Cournot Competition} (NCC). In this paper, we propose algorithms for finding pure Nash equilibria of NCC games in different situations. First, we carefully design a potential function for NCC, when the price functions for markets are linear functions of the production in that market. However, for nonlinear price functions, this approach is not feasible. We model the problem as a nonlinear complementarity problem in this case, and design a polynomial-time algorithm that finds an equilibrium of the game for strongly convex cost functions and strongly monotone revenue functions. We also explore the class of price functions that ensures strong monotonicity of the revenue function, and show it consists of a broad class of functions. Moreover, we discuss the uniqueness of equilibria in both of these cases which means our algorithms find the unique equilibria of the games. Last but not least, when the cost of production in one market is independent from the cost of production in other markets for all firms, the problem can be separated into several independent classical \emph{Cournot Oligopoly} problems. We give the first combinatorial algorithm for this widely studied problem

Counting Unique-Sink Orientations

Unique-sink orientations (USOs) are an abstract class of orientations of the n-cube graph. We consider some classes of USOs that are of interest in connection with the linear complementarity problem. We summarise old and show new lower and upper bounds on the sizes of some such classes. Furthermore, we provide a characterisation of K-matrices in terms of their corresponding USOs.Comment: 13 pages; v2: proof of main theorem expanded, plus various other corrections. Now 16 pages; v3: minor correction