A Hierarchical Game with Strategy Evolution for Mobile Sponsored Content and Service Markets

In sponsored content and service markets, the content and service providers are able to subsidize their target mobile users through directly paying the mobile network operator, to lower the price of the data/service access charged by the network operator to the mobile users. The sponsoring mechanism leads to a surge in mobile data and service demand, which in return compensates for the sponsoring cost and benefits the content/service providers. In this paper, we study the interactions among the three parties in the market, namely, the mobile users, the content/service providers and the network operator, as a two-level game with multiple Stackelberg (i.e., leader) players. Our study is featured by the consideration of global network effects owning to consumers' grouping. Since the mobile users may have bounded rationality, we model the service-selection process among them as an evolutionary-population follower sub-game. Meanwhile, we model the pricing-then-sponsoring process between the content/service providers and the network operator as a non-cooperative equilibrium searching problem. By investigating the structure of the proposed game, we reveal a few important properties regarding the equilibrium existence, and propose a distributed, projection-based algorithm for iterative equilibrium searching. Simulation results validate the convergence of the proposed algorithm, and demonstrate how sponsoring helps improve both the providers' profits and the users' experience

Non-Market Interactions

A large body of recent research argues that social, or non-market, interactions can explain a wide range of puzzling phenomena from fashion cycles to stock market crashes. This paper attempts to connect the range of these papers with a general model and a broad empirical overview. We establish conditions for existence and uniqueness of equilibria in social interactions models. The existence of multiple equilibria requires sufficient non-linearity in social interactions and only moderate heterogeneity across agents--strategic complementarities are neither necessary nor sufficient for multiple equilibria. We establish conditions for the existence of a social multiplier, which is the ratio of the aggregate outcome-input relationship to the individual outcome-input relationship. Models with multiple equilibria are empirically indistinguishable from models with significant social multipliers. Finally, we show the formal relationship between three known methods of empirically estimating social interactions, and suggests the plusses and minuses of these three approaches.

Informational Substitutes

We propose definitions of substitutes and complements for pieces of information ("signals") in the context of a decision or optimization problem, with game-theoretic and algorithmic applications. In a game-theoretic context, substitutes capture diminishing marginal value of information to a rational decision maker. We use the definitions to address the question of how and when information is aggregated in prediction markets. Substitutes characterize "best-possible" equilibria with immediate information aggregation, while complements characterize "worst-possible", delayed aggregation. Game-theoretic applications also include settings such as crowdsourcing contests and Q\&A forums. In an algorithmic context, where substitutes capture diminishing marginal improvement of information to an optimization problem, substitutes imply efficient approximation algorithms for a very general class of (adaptive) information acquisition problems. In tandem with these broad applications, we examine the structure and design of informational substitutes and complements. They have equivalent, intuitive definitions from disparate perspectives: submodularity, geometry, and information theory. We also consider the design of scoring rules or optimization problems so as to encourage substitutability or complementarity, with positive and negative results. Taken as a whole, the results give some evidence that, in parallel with substitutable items, informational substitutes play a natural conceptual and formal role in game theory and algorithms.Comment: Full version of FOCS 2016 paper. Single-column, 61 pages (48 main text, 13 references and appendix

Equilibria on a congested transportation network

Bibliography: leaves 26-29.Supported in part by the Transportation Advanced Research Program of the U.S. Department of Transportation under contract. DOT-TSC-1058 Supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant. 79-26225-ECSby Hedayat Z. Aashtiani and Thomas L. Magnanti

A linearization and decomposition algorithm for computing urban traffic equilibria

"This article has appeared in Proceedings, IEEE 192 Large-Scale Systems Symposium"--P.1.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 11-12).Supported in part by Dept. of Transportation DOT-TSC-1058. Supported in part by National Science Foundation 79-26225-ECS.by Hedayat Z. Aashtiani and Thomas L. Magnanti

Refinement of solutions to the linear complimentarity problem

Nash equilibrium;game theaory;matrices

The Jukebox Mode of Innovation - a Model of Commercial Open Source Development

In this paper, I describe and analyze the phenomenon of informal development collaboration between firms in the field of embedded Linux, a type of open source software. To explain the observed phenomenon of voluntary revealing, I develop a duopoly model of quality competition. The central assumptions are that firms require two complementary technologies as inputs, and differ with respect to the relative importance they attach to these technologies. The main results are, first, that a regime with compulsory revealing can lead not only to higher profits, but also to higher product qualities than a proprietary regime. Second, when the decision to reveal is endogenized equilibria arise with voluntary revealing by both players.Innovation; development collaboration; open source software; embedded Linyx

07471 Abstracts Collection -- Equilibrium Computation

From 18 to 23 November 2007, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07471 ``Equilibrium Computation\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available