IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/103081.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decentralized utilitarian mechanisms for scheduling games

Author

Listed:
  • Cole, Richard
  • Correa, Jose
  • Gkatzelis, Vasillis
  • Mirrokni, Vahab
  • Olver, Neil

Abstract

Game Theory and Mechanism Design are by now standard tools for studying and designing massive decentralized systems. Unfortunately, designing mechanisms that induce socially efficient outcomes often requires full information and prohibitively large computational resources. In this work we study simple mechanisms that require only local information. Specifically, in the setting of a classic scheduling problem, we demonstrate local mechanisms that induce outcomes with social cost close to that of the socially optimal solution. Somewhat counter-intuitively, we find that mechanisms yielding Pareto dominated outcomes may in fact enhance the overall performance of the system, and we provide a justification of these results by interpreting these inefficiencies as externalities being internalized. We also show how to employ randomization to obtain yet further improvements. Lastly, we use the game-theoretic insights gained to obtain a new combinatorial approximation algorithm for the underlying optimization problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Cole, Richard & Correa, Jose & Gkatzelis, Vasillis & Mirrokni, Vahab & Olver, Neil, 2015. "Decentralized utilitarian mechanisms for scheduling games," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103081, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:103081
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103081/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Petra Schuurman & Tjark Vredeveld, 2007. "Performance Guarantees of Local Search for Multiprocessor Scheduling," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 52-63, February.
    2. W. A. Horn, 1973. "Technical Note—Minimizing Average Flow Time with Parallel Machines," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 846-847, June.
    3. Chien, Steve & Sinclair, Alistair, 2011. "Convergence to approximate Nash equilibria in congestion games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 315-327, March.
    4. Rohde, K.I.M., 2005. "A reason for sophisticated investors not to seize arbitrage opportunities in markets without frictions," Research Memorandum 054, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    5. José R. Correa & Maurice Queyranne, 2012. "Efficiency of equilibria in restricted uniform machine scheduling with total weighted completion time as social cost," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(5), pages 384-395, August.
    6. Leslie A. Hall & Andreas S. Schulz & David B. Shmoys & Joel Wein, 1997. "Scheduling to Minimize Average Completion Time: Off-Line and On-Line Approximation Algorithms," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 513-544, August.
    7. Martin Skutella & Gerhard J. Woeginger, 2000. "A PTAS for Minimizing the Total Weighted Completion Time on Identical Parallel Machines," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 25(1), pages 63-75, February.
    8. Han Hoogeveen & Petra Schuurman & Gerhard J. Woeginger, 2001. "Non-Approximability Results for Scheduling Problems with Minsum Criteria," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 157-168, May.
    9. Wayne E. Smith, 1956. "Various optimizers for single‐stage production," Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(1‐2), pages 59-66, March.
    10. Schuurman, P. & Vredeveld, T., 2005. "Performance guarantees of local search for multiprocessor scheduling," Research Memorandum 055, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tami Tamir, 2023. "Cost-sharing games in real-time scheduling systems," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(1), pages 273-301, March.
    2. Herbert Hamers & Flip Klijn & Marco Slikker, 2019. "Implementation of optimal schedules in outsourcing with identical suppliers," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 89(2), pages 173-187, April.
    3. Braat, Jac & Hamers, Herbert & Klijn, Flip & Slikker, Marco, 2019. "A selfish allocation heuristic in scheduling: Equilibrium and inefficiency bound analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(2), pages 634-645.
    4. Vasilis Gkatzelis & Konstantinos Kollias & Tim Roughgarden, 2016. "Optimal Cost-Sharing in General Resource Selection Games," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(6), pages 1230-1238, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cole, Richard & Correa, José R. & Gkatzelis, Vasilis & Mirrokni, Vahab & Olver, Neil, 2015. "Decentralized utilitarian mechanisms for scheduling games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 306-326.
    2. Martin Skutella & Maxim Sviridenko & Marc Uetz, 2016. "Unrelated Machine Scheduling with Stochastic Processing Times," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 851-864, August.
    3. C N Potts & V A Strusevich, 2009. "Fifty years of scheduling: a survey of milestones," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 41-68, May.
    4. Guoqiang Fan & Qingqin Nong, 2018. "A Coordination Mechanism for a Scheduling Game with Uniform-Batching Machines," Asia-Pacific Journal of Operational Research (APJOR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 35(05), pages 1-15, October.
    5. Yossi Azar & Lisa Fleischer & Kamal Jain & Vahab Mirrokni & Zoya Svitkina, 2015. "Optimal Coordination Mechanisms for Unrelated Machine Scheduling," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 63(3), pages 489-500, June.
    6. José R. Correa & Martin Skutella & José Verschae, 2012. "The Power of Preemption on Unrelated Machines and Applications to Scheduling Orders," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 37(2), pages 379-398, May.
    7. Francisco Castillo-Zunino & Pinar Keskinocak, 2021. "Bi-criteria multiple knapsack problem with grouped items," Journal of Heuristics, Springer, vol. 27(5), pages 747-789, October.
    8. Xiangtong Qi, 2005. "A logistics scheduling model: Inventory cost reduction by batching," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 312-320, June.
    9. Han Hoogeveen & Petra Schuurman & Gerhard J. Woeginger, 2001. "Non-Approximability Results for Scheduling Problems with Minsum Criteria," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 157-168, May.
    10. Petra Schuurman & Tjark Vredeveld, 2007. "Performance Guarantees of Local Search for Multiprocessor Scheduling," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 52-63, February.
    11. Tjark Vredeveld & Cor Hurkens, 2002. "Experimental Comparison of Approximation Algorithms for Scheduling Unrelated Parallel Machines," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 14(2), pages 175-189, May.
    12. Zhi Pei & Mingzhong Wan & Ziteng Wang, 2020. "A new approximation algorithm for unrelated parallel machine scheduling with release dates," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 285(1), pages 397-425, February.
    13. Cong Chen & Yinfeng Xu, 0. "Coordination mechanisms for scheduling selfish jobs with favorite machines," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-33.
    14. Varun Gupta & Benjamin Moseley & Marc Uetz & Qiaomin Xie, 2020. "Greed Works—Online Algorithms for Unrelated Machine Stochastic Scheduling," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(2), pages 497-516, May.
    15. Jan Karel Lenstra & Franz Rendl & Frits Spieksma & Marc Uetz, 2022. "In memoriam Gerhard Woeginger," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 25(5), pages 503-505, October.
    16. Xiaoyan Zhang & Ran Ma & Jian Sun & Zan-Bo Zhang, 2022. "Randomized selection algorithm for online stochastic unrelated machines scheduling," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1796-1811, October.
    17. Robbert Fokkink & Thomas Lidbetter & László A. Végh, 2019. "On Submodular Search and Machine Scheduling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(4), pages 1431-1449, November.
    18. Dahlbeck, Mirko & Fischer, Anja & Fischer, Frank, 2020. "Decorous combinatorial lower bounds for row layout problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(3), pages 929-944.
    19. Felipe T. Muñoz & Guillermo Latorre-Núñez & Mario Ramos-Maldonado, 2023. "Developing New Bounds for the Performance Guarantee of the Jump Neighborhood for Scheduling Jobs on Uniformly Related Machines," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-16, December.
    20. Kumar, Subodha & Dutta, Kaushik & Mookerjee, Vijay, 2009. "Maximizing business value by optimal assignment of jobs to resources in grid computing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 194(3), pages 856-872, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    coordination mechanisms; scheduling; price of anarchy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:103081. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.