Complexity of Public Goods Games on Graphs

Matan Gilboa*, Noam Nisan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the computational complexity of “public goods games on networks”. In this model, each vertex in a graph is an agent that needs to take a binary decision of whether to “produce a good” or not. Each agent’s utility depends on the number of its neighbors in the graph that produce the good, as well as on its own action. This dependence can be captured by a “pattern” T:IN→{0,1} that describes an agent’s best response to every possible number of neighbors that produce the good. Answering a question of [Papadimitriou and Peng, 2021], we prove that for some simple pattern T the problem of determining whether a non-trivial pure Nash equilibrium exists is NP-complete. We extend our result to a wide class of such T, but also find a new polynomial time algorithm for some specific simple pattern T. We leave open the goal of characterizing the complexity for all patterns.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAlgorithmic Game Theory - 15th International Symposium, SAGT 2022, Proceedings
EditorsPanagiotis Kanellopoulos, Maria Kyropoulou, Alexandros Voudouris
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages151-168
Number of pages18
ISBN (Print)9783031157134
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Event15th International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory, SAGT 2022 - Colchester, United Kingdom
Duration: 12 Sep 202215 Sep 2022

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13584 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference15th International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory, SAGT 2022
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityColchester
Period12/09/2215/09/22

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Keywords

  • Computational Complexity
  • Nash Equilibrium
  • Public Goods

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Complexity of Public Goods Games on Graphs'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this