Achieving target equilibria in network routing games without knowing the latency functions

Umang Bhaskar, Katrina Ligett, Leonard J. Schulman and Chaitanya Swamy

Games and Economic Behavior, 2019, vol. 118, issue C, 533-569

Abstract: The analysis of network routing games typically assumes precise, detailed information about the latency functions. Such information may, however, be unavailable or difficult to obtain. Moreover, one is often primarily interested in enforcing a desired target flow as an equilibrium. We ask whether one can achieve target flows as equilibria without knowing the underlying latency functions. We give a crisp positive answer to this question. We show that one can efficiently compute edge tolls that induce a given target multicommodity flow in a nonatomic routing game using a polynomial number of queries to an oracle that takes tolls as input and outputs the resulting equilibrium flow. This result is obtained via a novel application of the ellipsoid method, and extends to various other settings. We obtain improved query-complexity bounds for series-parallel networks, and single-commodity routing games with linear latency functions. Our techniques provide new insights into network routing games.

Keywords: Routing games; Network flows; Tolls; Stackelberg routing; Query complexity; Ellipsoid algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:118:y:2019:i:c:p:533-569

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.02.009

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