New bounds for the price of anarchy under nonlinear and asymmetric costs

Abstract

We derive new bounds for the price of anarchy under nonlinear and asymmetric costs. The bounds depend on an additional factor called the intrinsic cost of the system and therefore tend to be more accurate than the current bounds that are dependent only on the degree of asymmetry of the Jacobian and the degree of the nonlinearity of the cost function.

Keywords:

• price of anarchy
• Nash equilibrium
• system optimum

Acknowledgements

J. Sun research is partially supported by the Provost's Chair Fund at NUS School of Business.