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A Selective Tour Through Congestion Games

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Algorithms, Probability, Networks, and Games

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9295))

Abstract

We give a sketchy and mostly informal overview of research on algorithmic properties of congestion games in the last ten years. We discuss existence of potential functions and pure Nash equilibria in games with weighted players, simple and fast algorithms that reach a pure Nash equilibrium, and efficient approaches to improving the Price of Anarchy.

This work was supported by the project Algorithmic Game Theory, co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund—ESF) and Greek national funds, through the Operational Program “Education and Lifelong Learning”, under the research funding program Thales.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that matroid congestion games and congestion games on extension-parallel networks have a different combinatorial structure and may have quite different properties. E.g., a network consisting of two parallel-link networks composed in series is not extension-parallel, but corresponds to a symmetric matroid congestion game.

  2. 2.

    For some \(\varepsilon > 0\), a configuration \(\varvec{s}\) is an \(\varepsilon \)-Nash equilibrium if for every path p with \(s_p > 0\) and every path \(p'\), \(d_p(\varvec{s}) \le d_{p'}(\varvec{s}) + \varepsilon \).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Computer Science, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780, Athens, Greece

    Dimitris Fotakis

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  1. Dimitris Fotakis
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Correspondence to Dimitris Fotakis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Patras, Patras, Greece

    Christos Zaroliagis

  2. Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Grammati Pantziou

  3. University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

    Spyros Kontogiannis

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Fotakis, D. (2015). A Selective Tour Through Congestion Games. In: Zaroliagis, C., Pantziou, G., Kontogiannis, S. (eds) Algorithms, Probability, Networks, and Games. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9295. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24024-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24024-4_14

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