English

Estimating the Nash Social Welfare for coverage and other submodular valuations

Computer Science and Game Theory 2021-01-08 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

We study the Nash Social Welfare problem: Given nn agents with valuation functions vi:2[m]Rv_i:2^{[m]} \rightarrow {\mathbb R}, partition [m][m] into S1,,SnS_1,\ldots,S_n so as to maximize (i=1nvi(Si))1/n(\prod_{i=1}^{n} v_i(S_i))^{1/n}. The problem has been shown to admit a constant-factor approximation for additive, budget-additive, and piecewise linear concave separable valuations; the case of submodular valuations is open. We provide a 1e(11e)2\frac{1}{e} (1-\frac{1}{e})^2-approximation of the {\em optimal value} for several classes of submodular valuations: coverage, sums of matroid rank functions, and certain matching-based valuations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2101.02278,
  title  = {Estimating the Nash Social Welfare for coverage and other submodular valuations},
  author = {Wenzheng Li and Jan Vondrak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.02278},
  year   = {2021}
}