Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion

To systematically study the implications of additional information about routes provided to certain users (e.g., via GPS-based route guidance systems), we introduce a new class of congestion games in which users have differing information sets about the available edges and can only use routes consis...

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Main Authors: Acemoglu, Daron, Makhdoumi Kakhaki, Ali, Malekian, Azarakhsh, Ozdaglar, Asu
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) 2019
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121504
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author Acemoglu, Daron
Makhdoumi Kakhaki, Ali
Malekian, Azarakhsh
Ozdaglar, Asu
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Acemoglu, Daron
Makhdoumi Kakhaki, Ali
Malekian, Azarakhsh
Ozdaglar, Asu
author_sort Acemoglu, Daron
collection MIT
description To systematically study the implications of additional information about routes provided to certain users (e.g., via GPS-based route guidance systems), we introduce a new class of congestion games in which users have differing information sets about the available edges and can only use routes consisting of edges in their information set. After defining the notion of an information-constrained wardrop equilibrium (ICWE) for this class of congestion games and studying its basic properties, we turn to our main focus: whether additional information can be harmful (in the sense of generating greater equilibrium costs/delays). We formulate this question in the form of an informational Braess' paradox (IBP), which extends the classic Braess' paradox in traffic equilibria and asks whether users receiving additional information can become worse off. We provide a comprehensive answer to this question showing that in any network in the series of linearly independent(SLI) class, which is a strict subset of series-parallel networks, the IBP cannot occur, and in any network that is not in the SLI class, there exists a configuration of edge-specific cost functions for which the IBP will occur. In the process, we establish several properties of the SLI class of networks, which include the characterization of the complement of the SLI class in terms of embedding a specific set of networks, and also an algorithm that determines whether a graph is SLI in linear time. We further prove that the worst-case inefficiency performance of ICWE is no worse than the standard Wardrop equilibrium.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1215042020-03-31T14:57:38Z Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion Acemoglu, Daron Makhdoumi Kakhaki, Ali Malekian, Azarakhsh Ozdaglar, Asu Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems To systematically study the implications of additional information about routes provided to certain users (e.g., via GPS-based route guidance systems), we introduce a new class of congestion games in which users have differing information sets about the available edges and can only use routes consisting of edges in their information set. After defining the notion of an information-constrained wardrop equilibrium (ICWE) for this class of congestion games and studying its basic properties, we turn to our main focus: whether additional information can be harmful (in the sense of generating greater equilibrium costs/delays). We formulate this question in the form of an informational Braess' paradox (IBP), which extends the classic Braess' paradox in traffic equilibria and asks whether users receiving additional information can become worse off. We provide a comprehensive answer to this question showing that in any network in the series of linearly independent(SLI) class, which is a strict subset of series-parallel networks, the IBP cannot occur, and in any network that is not in the SLI class, there exists a configuration of edge-specific cost functions for which the IBP will occur. In the process, we establish several properties of the SLI class of networks, which include the characterization of the complement of the SLI class in terms of embedding a specific set of networks, and also an algorithm that determines whether a graph is SLI in linear time. We further prove that the worst-case inefficiency performance of ICWE is no worse than the standard Wardrop equilibrium. 2019-07-08T12:34:20Z 2019-07-08T12:34:20Z 2018-08 2017-11 2019-06-28T16:39:27Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0030-364X 1526-5463 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121504 Acemoglu, Daron, Ali Makhdoumi, Azarakhsh Malekian and Asu Ozdaglar. "Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion." Operations research 66, no. 4 (August 2018): 893-917. en 10.1287/OPRE.2017.1712 Operations research Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/octet-stream Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) MIT web domain
spellingShingle Acemoglu, Daron
Makhdoumi Kakhaki, Ali
Malekian, Azarakhsh
Ozdaglar, Asu
Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
title Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
title_full Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
title_fullStr Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
title_full_unstemmed Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
title_short Informational Braess’ Paradox: The Effect of Information on Traffic Congestion
title_sort informational braess paradox the effect of information on traffic congestion
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121504
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