The Price of Queueing
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How is efficiency affected when demand excesses over supply are signalled through waiting in queues? We consider a class of congestion games with a nonatomic set of players of a constant mass, based on a formulation of generic linear programs as sequential resource allocation games. Players continuously select activities such that they maximize linear objectives interpreted as time-average of activity rewards, while active resource constraints cause queueing. In turn, the resulting waiting delays enter in the optimization problem of each player. The existence of Wardrop-type equilibria and their properties are investivated by means of a potential function related to proportional fairness. The inefficiency of the equilibria relative to optimal resource allocation is characterized through the price of anarchy which is 2 if all players are of the same type (∞ if not).
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