IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jogath/v46y2017i3d10.1007_s00182-016-0560-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coordination games on graphs

Author

Listed:
  • Krzysztof R. Apt

    (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Networks and Optimization Group)

  • Bart Keijzer

    (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Networks and Optimization Group)

  • Mona Rahn

    (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Networks and Optimization Group)

  • Guido Schäfer

    (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Networks and Optimization Group
    Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  • Sunil Simon

    (IIT Kanpur)

Abstract

We introduce natural strategic games on graphs, which capture the idea of coordination in a local setting. We study the existence of equilibria that are resilient to coalitional deviations of unbounded and bounded size (i.e., strong equilibria and k-equilibria respectively). We show that pure Nash equilibria and 2-equilibria exist, and give an example in which no 3-equilibrium exists. Moreover, we prove that strong equilibria exist for various special cases. We also study the price of anarchy (PoA) and price of stability (PoS) for these solution concepts. We show that the PoS for strong equilibria is 1 in almost all of the special cases for which we have proven strong equilibria to exist. The PoA for pure Nash equilbria turns out to be unbounded, even when we fix the graph on which the coordination game is to be played. For the PoA for k-equilibria, we show that the price of anarchy is between $$2(n-1)/(k-1) - 1$$ 2 ( n - 1 ) / ( k - 1 ) - 1 and $$2(n-1)/(k-1)$$ 2 ( n - 1 ) / ( k - 1 ) . The latter upper bound is tight for $$k=n$$ k = n (i.e., strong equilibria). Finally, we consider the problems of computing strong equilibria and of determining whether a joint strategy is a k-equilibrium or strong equilibrium. We prove that, given a coordination game, a joint strategy s, and a number k as input, it is co-NP complete to determine whether s is a k-equilibrium. On the positive side, we give polynomial time algorithms to compute strong equilibria for various special cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Krzysztof R. Apt & Bart Keijzer & Mona Rahn & Guido Schäfer & Sunil Simon, 2017. "Coordination games on graphs," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(3), pages 851-877, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jogath:v:46:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s00182-016-0560-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s00182-016-0560-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00182-016-0560-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00182-016-0560-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holzman, Ron & Law-Yone, Nissan, 1997. "Strong Equilibrium in Congestion Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 21(1-2), pages 85-101, October.
    2. Tobias Harks & Max Klimm & Rolf Möhring, 2013. "Strong equilibria in games with the lexicographical improvement property," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(2), pages 461-482, May.
    3. Konishi, Hideo & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 1997. "Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium in a Group Formation Game with Positive Externalities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 21(1-2), pages 161-182, October.
    4. Joseph T. Howson, Jr., 1972. "Equilibria of Polymatrix Games," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(5-Part-1), pages 312-318, January.
    5. Jackson, Matthew O. & Zenou, Yves, 2015. "Games on Networks," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    6. Milchtaich, Igal, 1996. "Congestion Games with Player-Specific Payoff Functions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 111-124, March.
    7. Bogomolnaia, Anna & Jackson, Matthew O., 2002. "The Stability of Hedonic Coalition Structures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 201-230, February.
    8. Tayfun Sönmez & Suryapratim Banerjee & Hideo Konishi, 2001. "Core in a simple coalition formation game," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 18(1), pages 135-153.
    9. Andelman, Nir & Feldman, Michal & Mansour, Yishay, 2009. "Strong price of anarchy," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 289-317, March.
    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. Nikolaos Nagkoulis & Konstantinos L. Katsifarakis, 2022. "Using Game Theory to Assign Groundwater Pumping Schedules," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 36(5), pages 1571-1586, March.
    2. Zhigang Cao & Cheng-zhong Qin & Xiaoguang Yang & Boyu Zhang, 2019. "Dynamic matching pennies on networks," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(3), pages 887-920, September.

    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. Le Breton, Michel & Shapoval, Alexander & Weber, Shlomo, 2021. "A game-theoretical model of the landscape theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 41-46.
    2. Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2009. "Existence of Pure Strategies Nash Equilibria in Social Interaction Games with Dyadic Externalities," CEPR Discussion Papers 7279, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Ryo Kawasaki & Hideo Konishi & Junki Yukawa, 2023. "Equilibria in bottleneck games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(3), pages 649-685, September.
    4. Tobias Harks & Max Klimm & Rolf Möhring, 2013. "Strong equilibria in games with the lexicographical improvement property," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(2), pages 461-482, May.
    5. Nikolai Kukushkin, 2007. "Congestion games revisited," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(1), pages 57-83, September.
    6. Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 2004. "Group Formation with Heterogeneous Sets," IDEI Working Papers 288, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    7. Di Feng & Bettina Klaus, 2022. "Preference revelation games and strict cores of multiple‐type housing market problems," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 18(1), pages 61-76, March.
    8. Arnold, Tone & Wooders, Myrna, 2002. "Dynamic Club Formation with Coordination," Economic Research Papers 269414, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    9. Kukushkin, Nikolai S., 2014. "Strong equilibrium in games with common and complementary local utilities," MPRA Paper 55499, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Kukushkin, Nikolai S., 2014. "Rosenthal's potential and a discrete version of the Debreu--Gorman Theorem," MPRA Paper 54171, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Fan-chin Kung, 2005. "Coalition Formation with Local Public Goods and Network Effect," Game Theory and Information 0506007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Anna Bogomolnaia & Herve Moulin, 2023. "Fair congested assignment problem," Papers 2301.12163, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    13. Anna Bogomolnaia & Michel Breton & Alexei Savvateev & Shlomo Weber, 2008. "Stability of jurisdiction structures under the equal share and median rules," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(3), pages 525-543, March.
    14. Kukushkin, Nikolai S., 2017. "Strong Nash equilibrium in games with common and complementary local utilities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-12.
    15. Kleinberg, Jon & Ligett, Katrina, 2013. "Information-sharing in social networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 702-716.
    16. Hans Gersbach & Hans Haller, 2018. "Power at general equilibrium," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(3), pages 425-455, March.
    17. Emiliya Lazarova & Dinko Dimitrov, 2013. "Status-seeking in hedonic games with heterogeneous players," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(4), pages 1205-1229, April.
    18. Milchtaich, Igal & Winter, Eyal, 2002. "Stability and Segregation in Group Formation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 318-346, February.
    19. Dimitrov, Dinko & Haake, Claus-Jochen, 2011. "Coalition formation in simple Games. the semistrict core," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 378, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    20. Mauleon, Ana & Roehl, Nils & Vannetelbosch, Vincent, 2019. "Paths to stability for overlapping group structures," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 19-24.

    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:spr:jogath:v:46:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s00182-016-0560-8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.