Differentiable Bilevel Programming for Stackelberg Congestion Games

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Li, Jiayang, Yu, Jing, Wang, Qianni, Liu, Boyi, Wang, Zhaoran, Nie, Yu Marco
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
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author Li, Jiayang
Yu, Jing
Wang, Qianni
Liu, Boyi
Wang, Zhaoran
Nie, Yu Marco
author_facet Li, Jiayang
Yu, Jing
Wang, Qianni
Liu, Boyi
Wang, Zhaoran
Nie, Yu Marco
contents In a Stackelberg congestion game (SCG), a leader aims to maximize their own gain by anticipating and manipulating the equilibrium state at which the followers settle by playing a congestion game. Often formulated as bilevel programs, large-scale SCGs are well known for their intractability and complexity. Here, we attempt to tackle this computational challenge by marrying traditional methodologies with the latest differentiable programming techniques in machine learning. The core idea centers on replacing the lower-level equilibrium problem with a smooth evolution trajectory defined by the imitative logit dynamic (ILD), which we prove converges to the equilibrium of the congestion game under mild conditions. Building upon this theoretical foundation, we propose two new local search algorithms for SCGs. The first is a gradient descent algorithm that obtains the derivatives by unrolling ILD via differentiable programming. Thanks to the smoothness of ILD, the algorithm promises both efficiency and scalability. The second algorithm adds a heuristic twist by cutting short the followers' evolution trajectory. Behaviorally, this means that, instead of anticipating the followers' best response at equilibrium, the leader seeks to approximate that response by only looking ahead a limited number of steps. Our numerical experiments are carried out over various instances of classic SCG applications, ranging from toy benchmarks to large-scale real-world examples. The results show the proposed algorithms are reliable and scalable local solvers that deliver high-quality solutions with greater regularity and significantly less computational effort compared to the many incumbents included in our study.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2209_07618
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Differentiable Bilevel Programming for Stackelberg Congestion Games
Li, Jiayang
Yu, Jing
Wang, Qianni
Liu, Boyi
Wang, Zhaoran
Nie, Yu Marco
Computer Science and Game Theory
Artificial Intelligence
Multiagent Systems
Systems and Control
In a Stackelberg congestion game (SCG), a leader aims to maximize their own gain by anticipating and manipulating the equilibrium state at which the followers settle by playing a congestion game. Often formulated as bilevel programs, large-scale SCGs are well known for their intractability and complexity. Here, we attempt to tackle this computational challenge by marrying traditional methodologies with the latest differentiable programming techniques in machine learning. The core idea centers on replacing the lower-level equilibrium problem with a smooth evolution trajectory defined by the imitative logit dynamic (ILD), which we prove converges to the equilibrium of the congestion game under mild conditions. Building upon this theoretical foundation, we propose two new local search algorithms for SCGs. The first is a gradient descent algorithm that obtains the derivatives by unrolling ILD via differentiable programming. Thanks to the smoothness of ILD, the algorithm promises both efficiency and scalability. The second algorithm adds a heuristic twist by cutting short the followers' evolution trajectory. Behaviorally, this means that, instead of anticipating the followers' best response at equilibrium, the leader seeks to approximate that response by only looking ahead a limited number of steps. Our numerical experiments are carried out over various instances of classic SCG applications, ranging from toy benchmarks to large-scale real-world examples. The results show the proposed algorithms are reliable and scalable local solvers that deliver high-quality solutions with greater regularity and significantly less computational effort compared to the many incumbents included in our study.
title Differentiable Bilevel Programming for Stackelberg Congestion Games
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Artificial Intelligence
Multiagent Systems
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07618