Welfare and Cost Aggregation for Multi-Agent Control: When to Choose Which Social Cost Function, and Why?
Fuente:
arXiv
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| _version_ | 1866917120462290944 |
|---|---|
| author | Shilov, Ilia Elokda, Ezzat Hall, Sophie Nax, Heinrich H. Bolognani, Saverio |
| author_facet | Shilov, Ilia Elokda, Ezzat Hall, Sophie Nax, Heinrich H. Bolognani, Saverio |
| contents | Many multi-agent socio-technical systems rely on aggregating heterogeneous agents' costs into a social cost function (SCF) to coordinate resource allocation in domains like energy grids, water allocation, or traffic management. The choice of SCF often entails implicit assumptions and may lead to undesirable outcomes if not rigorously justified. In this paper, we demonstrate that what determines which SCF ought to be used is the degree to which individual costs can be compared across agents and which axioms the aggregation shall fulfill. Drawing on the results from social choice theory, we provide guidance on how this process can be used in control applications. We demonstrate which assumptions about interpersonal utility comparability - ranging from ordinal level comparability to full cardinal comparability - together with a choice of desirable axioms, inform the selection of a correct SCF, be it the classical utilitarian sum, the Nash SCF, or maximin. We then demonstrate how the proposed framework can be applied for principled allocations of water and transportation resources. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_20772 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Welfare and Cost Aggregation for Multi-Agent Control: When to Choose Which Social Cost Function, and Why? Shilov, Ilia Elokda, Ezzat Hall, Sophie Nax, Heinrich H. Bolognani, Saverio Optimization and Control Multiagent Systems Systems and Control Many multi-agent socio-technical systems rely on aggregating heterogeneous agents' costs into a social cost function (SCF) to coordinate resource allocation in domains like energy grids, water allocation, or traffic management. The choice of SCF often entails implicit assumptions and may lead to undesirable outcomes if not rigorously justified. In this paper, we demonstrate that what determines which SCF ought to be used is the degree to which individual costs can be compared across agents and which axioms the aggregation shall fulfill. Drawing on the results from social choice theory, we provide guidance on how this process can be used in control applications. We demonstrate which assumptions about interpersonal utility comparability - ranging from ordinal level comparability to full cardinal comparability - together with a choice of desirable axioms, inform the selection of a correct SCF, be it the classical utilitarian sum, the Nash SCF, or maximin. We then demonstrate how the proposed framework can be applied for principled allocations of water and transportation resources. |
| title | Welfare and Cost Aggregation for Multi-Agent Control: When to Choose Which Social Cost Function, and Why? |
| topic | Optimization and Control Multiagent Systems Systems and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20772 |