| Record |
| Author |
Colini-Baldeschi, R.; Cominetti, R.; Mertikopoulos, P.; Scarsini, M. |
| Title |
When Is Selfish Routing Bad? The Price of Anarchy in Light and Heavy Traffic |
Type |
|
| Year |
2020 |
Publication |
Operations Research |
Abbreviated Journal |
Oper. Res. |
| Volume |
68 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
411-434 |
| Keywords |
nonatomic congestion games; price of anarchy; light traffic; heavy traffic; regular variation |
| Abstract |
This paper examines the behavior of the price of anarchy as a function of the traffic inflow in nonatomic congestion games with multiple origin/destination (O/D) pairs. Empirical studies in real-world networks show that the price of anarchy is close to 1 in both light and heavy traffic, thus raising the following question: can these observations be justified theoretically? We first show that this is not always the case: the price of anarchy may remain a positive distance away from 1 for all values of the traffic inflow, even in simple three-link networks with a single O/D pair and smooth, convex costs. On the other hand, for a large class of cost functions (including all polynomials) and inflow patterns, the price of anarchy does converge to 1 in both heavy and light traffic, irrespective of the network topology and the number of O/D pairs in the network. We also examine the rate of convergence of the price of anarchy, and we show that it follows a power law whose degree can be computed explicitly when the network's cost functions are polynomials. |
| Address |
[Colini-Baldeschi, Riccardo] Facebook Inc, Core Data Sci Grp, London W1T 1FB, England, Email: rickuz@fb.com; |
| Corporate Author |
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Thesis |
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| Publisher |
Informs |
Place of Publication |
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Editor |
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| Language |
English |
Summary Language |
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Original Title |
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| Series Editor |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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| Series Volume |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0030-364x |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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| Area |
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Expedition |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
WOS:000521730200006 |
Approved |
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| Call Number |
UAI @ eduardo.moreno @ |
Serial |
1128 |
| Permanent link to this record |
