The sequential price of anarchy for affine congestion games with few players

Abstract

This paper determines the sequential price of anarchy for Rosenthal congestion games with affine cost functions and few players. We show that for two players, the sequential price of anarchy equals 1.5, and for three players it equals approximately 2.13. While the case with two players is analyzed analytically, the tight bound for three players is based on the explicit computation of a worst-case instance using linear programming. The basis for both results are combinatorial arguments to show that finite worst-case instances exist