Nash equilibrium is the central solution concept in Game Theory. Since Nash’s
original paper in 1951, it has found countless applications in modeling strategic
behavior of traders in markets, (human) drivers and (electronic) routers in
congested networks, nations in nuclear disarmament negotiations, and more. A
decade ago, the relevance of this solution concept was called into question by
computer scientists, who proved (under appropriate complexity assumptions)
that computing a Nash equilibrium is an intractable problem. And if centralized,
specially designed algorithms cannot find Nash equilibria, why should we expect
distributed, selfish agents to converge to one? The remaining hope was that at
least approximate Nash equilibria can be efficiently computed.
Understanding whether there is an efficient algorithm for approximate Nash
equilibrium has been the central open problem in this field for the past decade.
In this book, we provide strong evidence that even finding an approximate Nash
equilibrium is intractable. We prove several intractability theorems for different
settings (two-player games and many-player games) and models (computational
complexity, query complexity, and communication complexity). In particular, our
main result is that under a plausible
and natural complexity assumption
(“Exponential Time Hypothesis for
PPAD”), there is no polynomial-time
algorithm for finding an approximate
Nash equilibrium in two-player games.
2017 ACM Dissertation
Award Winner