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We study the computational complexity of the problem of computing local min-max equilibria of games with a nonconvex-nonconcave utility function $f$. From the work of Daskalakis, Skoulakis, and Zampetakis [DSZ21], this problem was known to…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni

We investigate the computational complexity of min-max optimization under coupled constraints. The work of Daskalakis, Skoulakis, and Zampetakis [DSZ21] was the first to study min-max optimization through the lens of computational…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Andrea Celli , Gabriele Farina

We develop a quasi-polynomial time Las Vegas algorithm for approximating Nash equilibria in polymatrix games over trees, under a mild renormalizing assumption. Our result, in particular, leads to an expected polynomial-time algorithm for…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-04-12 Siddharth Barman , Katrina Ligett , Georgios Piliouras

While there have been a number of studies about the efficacy of methods to find exact Nash equilibria in bimatrix games, there has been little empirical work on finding approximate Nash equilibria. Here we provide such a study that compares…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-04-10 John Fearnley , Tobenna Peter Igwe , Rahul Savani

In this paper we study the fine-grained complexity of finding exact and approximate solutions to problems in P. Our main contribution is showing reductions from exact to approximate solution for a host of such problems. As one (notable)…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2022-12-12 Lijie Chen , Shafi Goldwasser , Kaifeng Lyu , Guy N. Rothblum , Aviad Rubinstein

We study the computation of equilibria of anonymous games, via algorithms that may proceed via a sequence of adaptive queries to the game's payoff function, assumed to be unknown initially. The general topic we consider is \emph{query…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-05-06 Paul W. Goldberg , Stefano Turchetta

We investigate the complexity of bounding the uncertainty of graphical games, and we provide new insight into the intrinsic difficulty of computing Nash equilibria. In particular, we show that, if one adds very simple and natural additional…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-07-09 Gianluigi Greco , Francesco Scarcello

We study the query complexity of approximate notions of Nash equilibrium in games with a large number of players $n$. Our main result states that for $n$-player binary-action games and for constant $\varepsilon$, the query complexity of an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-07-21 Yakov Babichenko

Whether a PTAS (polynomial-time approximation scheme) exists for game equilibria has been an open question, and its absence has indications and consequences in three fields: the practicality of methods in algorithmic game theory,…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-06 Hongbo Sun , Chongkun Xia , Junbo Tan , Bo Yuan , Xueqian Wang , Bin Liang

A fundamental shortcoming of the concept of Nash equilibrium is its computational intractability: approximating Nash equilibria in normal-form games is PPAD-hard. In this paper, inspired by the ideas of smoothed analysis, we introduce a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-23 Constantinos Daskalakis , Noah Golowich , Nika Haghtalab , Abhishek Shetty

We study the inapproximability of the induced disjoint paths problem on an arbitrary $n$-node $m$-edge undirected graph, which is to connect the maximum number of the $k$ source-sink pairs given in the graph via induced disjoint paths. It…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-03-14 Gaoxiu Dong , Weidong Chen

We study the extent to which it is possible to approximate the optimal value of a Unique Games instance in Fixed-Point Logic with Counting (FPC). Formally, we prove lower bounds against the accuracy of FPC-interpretations that map Unique…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2024-08-07 Jamie Tucker-Foltz

Metric data plays an important role in various settings such as metric-based indexing, clustering, classification, and approximation algorithms in general. Due to measurement error, noise, or an inability to completely gather all the data,…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2018-07-24 Chenglin Fan , Benjamin Raichel , Gregory Van Buskirk

We present a new technique for efficiently removing almost all short cycles in a graph without unintentionally removing its triangles. Consequently, triangle finding problems do not become easy even in almost $k$-cycle free graphs, for any…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Amir Abboud , Karl Bringmann , Seri Khoury , Or Zamir

In this article, we consider generalized Nash games where the associated constraint map is not necessarily self. The classical Nash equilibrium may not exist for such games and therefore we introduce the notion of best approximate solution…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-04-05 Asrifa Sultana , Shivani Valecha

We consider the problem of computing stationary points in min-max optimization, with a particular focus on the special case of computing Nash equilibria in (two-)team zero-sum games. We first show that computing $\epsilon$-Nash equilibria…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Ioannis Anagnostides , Ioannis Panageas , Tuomas Sandholm , Jingming Yan

Optimizing parameters of Two-Prover-One-Round Game (2P1R) is an important task in PCPs literature as it would imply a smaller PCP with the same or stronger soundness. While this is a basic question in PCPs community, the connection between…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2012-12-13 Bundit Laekhanukit

We consider structural and algorithmic questions related to the Nash dynamics of weighted congestion games. In weighted congestion games with linear latency functions, the existence of (pure Nash) equilibria is guaranteed by potential…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-11-14 Ioannis Caragiannis , Angelo Fanelli , Nick Gravin , Alexander Skopalik

In the bottleneck multiple knapsack problem, we are given a set of items and a set of knapsacks, where each item has a profit and a weight, and each knapsack has a capacity. Our goal is to assign items to knapsacks so as to maximize the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Lin Chen , Tingwei Hu , Yuchen Mao , Yong Chen , Lili Mei , An Zhang , Guangting Chen , Guochuan Zhang

In this paper, we present a method for finding approximate Nash equilibria in a broad class of reachability games. These games are often used to formulate both collision avoidance and goal satisfaction. Our method is computationally…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-03-23 David Fridovich-Keil , Claire J. Tomlin