Congestion games with malicious players

Moshe Babaioff, Robert Kleinberg*, Christos H. Papadimitriou

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the equilibria of non-atomic congestion games in which there are two types of players: rational players, who seek to minimize their own delay, and malicious players, who seek to maximize the average delay experienced by the rational players. We study the existence of pure and mixed Nash equilibria for these games, and we seek to quantify the impact of the malicious players on the equilibrium. One counterintuitive phenomenon which we demonstrate is the "windfall of malice": paradoxically, when a myopically malicious player gains control of a fraction of the flow, the new equilibrium may be more favorable for the remaining rational players than the previous equilibrium.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)22-35
Number of pages14
JournalGames and Economic Behavior
Volume67
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Congestion games
  • Equilibrium
  • Malicious behavior
  • Selfish routing

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