vix.ing · top · new · best · stats · spec

Equilibrium and Selfish Behavior in Network Contagion

2025/02/27 by Zhang, Yi, Kapoor, Sanjiv
#Computational Complexity (cs.CC) #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #FOS: Computer and information sciences

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.00078

Abstract

In this paper we consider non-atomic games in populations that are provided with a choice of preventive policies to act against a contagion spreading amongst interacting populations, be it biological organisms or connected computing devices. The spreading model of the contagion is the standard SIR model. Each participant of the population has a choice from amongst a set of precautionary policies with each policy presenting a payoff or utility, which we assume is the same within each group, the risk being the possibility of infection. The policy groups interact with each other. We also define a network model to model interactions between different population sets. The population sets reside at nodes of the network and follow policies available at that node. We define game-theoretic models and study the inefficiency of allowing for individual decision making, as opposed to centralized control. We study the computational aspects as well.

Related