The Effectiveness of Subsidies and Tolls in Congestion Games

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ferguson, Bryce L.; Brown, Philip N.; Marden, Jason R.
• 署名单位: University of Colorado System; University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
• 刊物名称: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0018-9286
• DOI: 10.1109/TAC.2021.3088412
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 2729-2742
• 关键词: routing; games; Robustness; Optimized Production Technology; finance; uncertainty; transportation; game theory; incentives; socio-technical systems; traffic congestion

摘要

Are rewards or penalties more effective in influencing user behavior? This article compares the effectiveness of subsidies and tolls in incentivizing user behavior in congestion games. The predominantly studied method of influencing user behavior in network routing problems is to institute taxes which alter users' observed costs in a manner that causes their self-interested choices to more closely align with a system-level objective. Another conceivable method to accomplish the same goal is to subsidize the users' actions that are preferable from a system-level perspective. We show that, when users behave similarly and predictably, subsidies offer superior performance guarantees to tolls under similar budgetary constraints; however, in the presence of unknown player heterogeneity, subsidies fail to offer the same robustness as tolls.