On the stable containment of two sets

This paper studies the stability of the set containment problem. Given two non-empty sets in the Euclidean space which are the solution sets of two systems of (possibly infinite) inequalities, the Farkas type results allow to decide whether one of the two sets is contained or not in the other one (which constitutes the so-called containment problem). In those situations where the data (i.e., the constraints) can be affected by some kind of perturbations, the problem consists of determining whether the relative position of the two sets is preserved by sufficiently small perturbations or not. This paper deals with this stability problem as a particular case of the maintaining of the relative position of the images of two set-valued mappings; first for general set-valued mappings and second for solution sets mappings of convex and linear systems. Thus the results in this paper could be useful in the postoptimal analysis of optimization problems with inclusion constraints.Research supported by MCYT of Spain and FEDER of EU, Grant MTM2005-08572-C03-01, and by SECYT-UNCuyo of Argentina, Grant 658/05-R, 882/07-R