{"has_accepted_license":"1","user_id":"14052","page":"30-43","status":"public","ddc":["040"],"abstract":[{"lang":"eng","text":"In this paper we study the potential function in congestion games. We consider both games with non-decreasing cost functions as well as games with non-increasing utility functions. We show that the value of the potential function $\\Phi(\\sf s)$ of any outcome $\\sf s$ of a congestion game approximates the optimum potential value $\\Phi(\\sf s^*)$ by a factor $\\Psi_{\\mathcal{F}}$ which only depends on the set of cost/utility functions $\\mathcal{F}$, and an additive term which is bounded by the sum of the total possible improvements of the players in the outcome $\\sf s$. The significance of this result is twofold. On the one hand it provides \\emph{Price-of-Anarchy}-like results with respect to the potential function. On the other hand, we show that these approximations can be used to compute $(1+\\varepsilon)\\cdot\\Psi_{\\mathcal{F}}$-approximate pure Nash equilibria for congestion games with non-decreasing cost functions. For the special case of polynomial cost functions, this significantly improves the guarantees from Caragiannis et al. [FOCS 2011]. Moreover, our machinery provides the first guarantees for general latency functions."}],"date_created":"2017-10-17T12:42:20Z","project":[{"name":"SFB 901","_id":"1"},{"_id":"2","name":"SFB 901 - Teilprojekt A"},{"name":"SFB 901 - Subprojekt A3","_id":"7"}],"date_updated":"2022-01-06T07:01:09Z","publication":"Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)","title":"Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria","department":[{"_id":"63"},{"_id":"541"}],"type":"conference","file_date_updated":"2018-03-16T11:24:11Z","_id":"453","doi":"10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3","year":"2014","author":[{"orcid":"0000-0003-1348-6516","id":"14052","last_name":"Feldotto","full_name":"Feldotto, Matthias","first_name":"Matthias"},{"last_name":"Gairing","full_name":"Gairing, Martin","first_name":"Martin"},{"last_name":"Skopalik","full_name":"Skopalik, Alexander","first_name":"Alexander","id":"40384"}],"file":[{"success":1,"date_created":"2018-03-16T11:24:11Z","creator":"florida","date_updated":"2018-03-16T11:24:11Z","relation":"main_file","file_size":324307,"access_level":"closed","content_type":"application/pdf","file_name":"453-WINE14FGS.pdf","file_id":"1342"}],"series_title":"LNCS","citation":{"ama":"Feldotto M, Gairing M, Skopalik A. Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria. In: <i>Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)</i>. LNCS. ; 2014:30-43. doi:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3\">10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3</a>","chicago":"Feldotto, Matthias, Martin Gairing, and Alexander Skopalik. “Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria.” In <i>Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)</i>, 30–43. LNCS, 2014. <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3\">https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3</a>.","short":"M. Feldotto, M. Gairing, A. Skopalik, in: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE), 2014, pp. 30–43.","apa":"Feldotto, M., Gairing, M., &#38; Skopalik, A. (2014). Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria. In <i>Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)</i> (pp. 30–43). <a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3\">https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3</a>","bibtex":"@inproceedings{Feldotto_Gairing_Skopalik_2014, series={LNCS}, title={Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria}, DOI={<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3\">10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3</a>}, booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)}, author={Feldotto, Matthias and Gairing, Martin and Skopalik, Alexander}, year={2014}, pages={30–43}, collection={LNCS} }","mla":"Feldotto, Matthias, et al. “Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria.” <i>Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)</i>, 2014, pp. 30–43, doi:<a href=\"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3\">10.1007/978-3-319-13129-0_3</a>.","ieee":"M. Feldotto, M. Gairing, and A. Skopalik, “Bounding the Potential Function in Congestion Games and Approximate Pure Nash Equilibria,” in <i>Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE)</i>, 2014, pp. 30–43."}}