The price of anarchy of serial, average and incremental cost sharing

Moulin, H. (2008) The price of anarchy of serial, average and incremental cost sharing. Economic Theory, 36(3), pp. 379-405. (doi: 10.1007/s00199-007-0275-y)

Abstract

We compute the price of anarchy (PoA) of three familiar demand games, i.e., the smallest ratio of the equilibrium to efficient surplus, over all convex preferences quasi-linear in money. For any convex cost, the PoA is at least 1n in the average and serial games, where n is the number of users. It is zero in the incremental game for piecewise linear cost functions. With quadratic costs, the PoA of the serial game is θ(1logn) , and θ(1n) for the average and incremental games. This generalizes if the marginal cost is convex or concave, and its elasticity is bounded.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Moulin, Professor Herve
• Authors: Moulin, H.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > Adam Smith Business School > Economics
• Journal Name: Economic Theory
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 0938-2259
• ISSN (Online): 1432-0479