A survey of approximability and inapproximability results for social welfare optimization in multiagent resource allocation

Multiagent resource allocation provides mechanisms to allocate bundles of resources to agents, where resources are assumed to be indivisible and nonshareable. A central goal is to maximize social welfare of such allocations, which can be measured in terms of the sum of utilities realized by the agen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of mathematics and artificial intelligence Vol. 68; no. 1-3; pp. 65 - 90
Main Authors: Nguyen, Trung Thanh, Roos, Magnus, Rothe, Jörg
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.07.2013
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Agents (artificial intelligence)
Artificial Intelligence
Bundles
Complex Systems
Computer Science
Focusing
Mathematical models
Mathematics
Multiagent systems
Optimization
Reagents
Resource allocation
Utilities
68T99
Computational social choice
Approximability
68Q17
Social welfare optimization
Multiagent resource allocation
ISSN:1012-2443, 1573-7470
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Multiagent resource allocation provides mechanisms to allocate bundles of resources to agents, where resources are assumed to be indivisible and nonshareable. A central goal is to maximize social welfare of such allocations, which can be measured in terms of the sum of utilities realized by the agents ( utilitarian social welfare ), in terms of their minimum ( egalitarian social welfare ), and in terms of their product ( Nash product social welfare ). Unfortunately, social welfare optimization is a computationally intractable task in many settings. We survey recent approximability and inapproximability results on social welfare optimization in multiagent resource allocation, focusing on the two most central representation forms for utility functions of agents, the bundle form and the k-additive form . In addition, we provide some new (in)approximability results on maximizing egalitarian social welfare and social welfare with respect to the Nash product when restricted to certain special cases.
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ISSN:1012-2443
1573-7470
DOI:10.1007/s10472-012-9328-4