Solving Chance-Constrained Games Using Complementarity Problems

This paper is concerned with the mixed linear complementarity problem and the role it and its variants play in the stability analysis of the nonlinear complementarity problem and the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker system of a variational inequality problem. Under a nonsingular assumption, the mixed linear complementarity problem can be converted to the standard problem; in this case, the rich theory of the latter can be directly applied to the former. In this work, we employ degree theory to derive some sufficient conditions for the existence of a solution to the mixed linear complementarity problem in the absence of the nonsingularity property. Next, we extend this existence theory to the mixed nonlinear complementarity problem and establish a main stability result under a certain degree-theoretic assumption concerning the linearized problem. We then specialize this stability result and its consequences to the parametric variational inequality problem under the assumption of a unique set of multipliers. Finally, we consider the latter problem with the uniqueness assumption of the multipliers replaced by a convexity assumption and obtain stability results under some weak second-order conditions. In addition to the new existence results for the mixed linear complementarity problem, the main contributions of this paper in the stability category are the following: a resolution to a conjecture concerning the local solvability of a parametric variational inequality, the use of the generalized linear complementarity problem as a tool to broaden the second-order conditions, the characterization of the solution stability of the linear complementarity problem and the affine variational inequality problem in terms of the solution isolatedness under some weak hypotheses, and various stability theorems under some weak second-order conditions.

We present a new difference of convex functions algorithm (DCA) for solving linear and nonlinear mixed complementarity problems (MCPs). The approach is based on the reformulation of bilinear complementarity constraints as difference of convex (DC) functions, more specifically, the difference of scalar, convex quadratic terms. This reformulation gives rise to a DC program, which is solved via sequential linear approximations of the concave term using standard DCA techniques. The reformulation is based on a generalization of earlier results on recasting bilinearities and leads to a novel algorithmic framework for MCPs. Through extensive numerical experimentation, the proposed approach, referred to as DCA-BL, proves to be an efficient heuristic for complementarity problems. For linear complementarity problems (LCPs), we test the approach on a number of randomly generated instances by varying the size, the density, and the eigenvalue distribution of the LCP matrix, providing insights into the numerical properties of DCA-BL. In addition, we apply the framework to a market equilibrium problem and find that DCA-BL scales well on realistic LCP instances. Also, through experimentation, we find that that DCA-BL performs particularly well compared with other DC-based complementarity approaches in the literature if the LCP is highly dense, asymmetric, or indefinite. Lastly, the method is successfully applied to a set of equilibrium problems with second-order cone constraints, which give rise to nonlinear complementarity problems, with applications to stochastic equilibrium problems in water infrastructure and finance. History: Accepted by Antonio Frangioni, Area Editor for Design & Analysis of Algorithms–Continuous. Funding: This work was supported by the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation [Grant 2113891], the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems [Grant 2114100], the Office of Naval Research Global [Grant 00014-22-1-2649], Petrobras [Grant 4324713], the Division of Mathematical Sciences [Grant 2318519], and the Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond [Grant 0217-00009B]. Supplemental Material: The software that supports the findings of this study is available within the paper and its Supplemental Information ( https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/suppl/10.1287/ijoc.2024.0822 ) as well as from the IJOC GitHub software repository ( https://github.com/INFORMSJoC/2024.0822 ). The complete IJOC Software and Data Repository is available at https://informsjoc.github.io/ .

A popular approach for addressing uncertainty in variational inequality problems is by solving the expected residual minimization (ERM) problem. This avenue necessitates distributional information associated with the uncertainty and requires minimizing nonconvex expectation-valued functions. We consider a distinctly different approach in the context of uncertain linear complementarity problems with a view towards obtaining robust solutions. Specifically, we define a robust solution to a complementarity problem as one that minimizes the worst-case of the gap function. In what we believe is amongst the first efforts to comprehensively address such problems in a distribution-free environment, we show that under specified assumptions on the uncertainty sets, the robust solutions to uncertain monotone linear complementarity problem can be tractably obtained through the solution of a single convex program. We also define uncertainty sets that ensure that robust solutions to non-monotone generalizations can also be obtained by solving convex programs. More generally, robust counterparts of uncertain non-monotone LCPs are proven to be low-dimensional nonconvex quadratically constrained quadratic programs. We show that these problems may be globally resolved by customizing an existing branching scheme. We further extend the tractability results to include uncertain affine variational inequality problems defined over uncertain polyhedral sets as well as to hierarchical regimes captured by mathematical programs with uncertain complementarity constraints. Preliminary numerics on uncertain linear complementarity and traffic equilibrium problems suggest that the presented avenues hold promise.

Proposed is a time-marching al- gorithm to solve a nonlinear system of com- plementarity equations: Pi(xj) ≥ 0, Qi(xj) ≥ 0, Pi(xj)Qi(xj )= 0, i, j = 1,...,n, resulting from a discretization of nonlinear obstacle problem. We transform the above nonlinear complemen- tarity problem (NCP) into a nonlinear algebraic equations (NAEs) system: Fi(xj )= 0 with the aid of the Fischer-Burmeister NCP-function. Such NAEs are semi-smooth,highlynonlinearand usu- ally implicit, being hard to handle by the Newton- like method. Instead of, a first-order system of ODEs is derived through a fictitious time equa- tion. The time-stepping equations are obtained by applying a numerical integration on the resul- tant ODEs, which are derivative-free and do not need the inverse of any matrix. The computa- tional cost is thus greatly reduced. The numerical examples of Bratu, von Karman and other elliptic equationsareusedto demonstratethatthenewfic- titious time integration method (FTIM) is highly efficient to calculate the obstacle problems. Keyword: Nonlinear Obstacle Problem, Non- linear complementarity problem, Nonlinear alge- braic equations, Iterative method, Elliptic equa- tions, Fictitious time integration method (FTIM)

The Linear Dynamic Complementarity Problem is a special case of the Extended Linear Complementarity Problem

Using a 1958 result of Lojasiewicz, we establish an error bound for analytic systems consisting of equalities and inequalities defined by real analytic functions. In particular, we show that over any bounded region, the distance from any vectorx in the region to the solution set of an analytic system is bounded by a residual function, raised to a certain power, evaluated atx. For quadratic systems satisfying certain nonnegativity assumptions, we show that this exponent is equal to 1/2. We apply the error bounds to the Karush--Kuhn--Tucker system of a variational inequality, the affine variational inequality, the linear and nonlinear complementarity problem, and the 0---1 integer feasibility problem, and obtain new error bound results for these problems. The latter results extend previous work for polynomial systems and explain why a certain square-root term is needed in an error bound for the (monotone) linear complementarity problem.

In this paper, we generalize modulus-based matrix splitting methods to a class of horizontal nonlinear complementarity problems (HNCPs). First, we write the HNCP as an implicit fixed-point equation and we introduce the proposed solution procedures. We then prove the convergence of the methods under some assumptions. We also comment on how the proposed methods and convergence theorems generalize existing results on (standard) linear and nonlinear complementarity problems and on horizontal linear complementarity problems. Finally, numerical experiments are solved to demonstrate the efficiency of the procedures. In this context, the effects of the splitting, of the dimension of the matrices, and of the nonlinear term of the problem are analyzed.

We address the Nash equilibrium problem in a partial-decision information scenario, where each agent can only observe the actions of some neighbors, while its cost possibly depends on the strategies of other agents. Our main contribution is the design of a fully-distributed, single-layer, fixed-step algorithm, based on a proximal best-response augmented with consensus terms. To derive our algorithm, we follow an operator-theoretic approach. First, we recast the Nash equilibrium problem as that of finding a zero of a monotone operator. Then, we demonstrate that the resulting inclusion can be solved in a fully-distributed way via a proximal-point method, thanks to the use of a novel preconditioning matrix. Under strong monotonicity and Lipschitz continuity of the game mapping, we prove linear convergence of our algorithm to a Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, we show that our method outperforms the fastest known gradient-based schemes, both in terms of guaranteed convergence rate, via theoretical analysis, and in practice, via numerical simulations.

A bilevel optimization formulation of policy design problems considering multiple objectives and incomplete preferences of the stakeholders is presented. The formulation is presented for Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) policy design for decentralized energy infrastructure. The upper-level problem is the policy designer's problem and the lower-level problem is a Nash equilibrium problem resulting from market interactions. The policy designer has two objectives: maximizing the quantity of energy generated and minimizing policy cost. The stakeholders decide on quantities while maximizing net present value and minimizing capital investment. The Nash equilibrium problem in the presence of incomplete preferences is formulated as a stochastic linear complementarity problem and solved using expected value formulation, expected residual minimization formulation, and the Monte Carlo technique. The primary contributions in this article are the mathematical formulation of the FIT policy, the extension of computational policy design problems to multiple objectives, and the consideration of incomplete preferences of stakeholders for policy design problems.

This article considers the (two-player) composite Nash equilibrium (CNE) problem with a separable nonsmooth part, which is known to include the composite saddle-point (CSP) problem as a special case. Due to its two-block structure, this problem can be solved by any algorithm belonging to the block-decomposition hybrid proximal-extragradient (BD-HPE) framework proposed in [R. D. C. Monteiro and B. F. Svaiter, SIAM J. Optim., 23 (2013), pp. 475--507]. The framework consists of a family of inexact proximal point methods for solving a more general two-block structured monotone inclusion problem which, at every iteration, solves two prox subinclusions according to a certain relative error criterion. By exploiting the fact that the two prox subinclusions in the context of the CNE problem are equivalent to two composite convex programs, this article proposes a new instance of the BD-HPE framework that approximately solves them using an accelerated gradient method. It is shown that the new instance is able to take significantly larger prox stepsizes than other instances from this framework that perform single composite gradient steps for solving the subinclusions. As a result, it is shown that the first instance has better iteration-complexity than the latter ones. Finally, it is also shown that the new accelerated BD-HPE instance computationally outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms on many relevant classes of CSP and CNE instances.

We consider the Nash equilibrium problem with vector payoffs in a topological vector space. By employing the recent concept of relative (pseudo) monotonicity, we establish several existence results for vector Nash equilibria and vector equilibria. The results strengthen in a major way existence results for vector equilibrium problems which were based on the usual (generalized) monotonicity concepts.

We consider the problem of finding Nash equilibrium for two-player turn-based zero-sum games. Inspired by the AlphaGo Zero (AGZ) algorithm, we develop a Reinforcement Learning based approach. Specifically, we propose Explore-Improve-Supervise (EIS) method that combines exploration, improvement and supervised learning to find the value function and policy associated with Nash equilibrium. We identify sufficient conditions for convergence and correctness for such an approach. For a concrete instance of EIS where random policy is used for exploration, Monte-Carlo Tree Search is used for improvement and Nearest Neighbors is used for supervised learning, we establish that this method finds an $\varepsilon$-approximate value function of Nash equilibrium in $\widetildeO(\varepsilon^-(d+4))$ steps when the underlying state-space of the game is continuous and d-dimensional. This is nearly optimal as we establish a lower bound of $\widetildeOmega (\varepsilon^-(d+2) )$ for any policy.

With the advancement of power-to-gas (P2G) technology and local energy markets, new opportunities emerge for small-scale gas distributors (GDs) to unlock additional value. However, research on multiple GDs within the same power network participating in local energy markets remains unexplored, potentially leading to suboptimal collaborative efficiency and market imbalance. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes a heterogeneous game framework that integrates mixed-integer Nash equilibrium problem (MI-NEP) and generalized Nash equilibrium problem (GNEP). The framework assumes rational GDs simultaneously engage in non-convex GNEP for optimal power flow (OPF) coordination in distribution systems while addressing MI-NEP governing pipeline flow control in local gas market transactions. We develop a collaborative computing solution combining the best response (BR) method with a Korpelevich-inspired algorithm to obtain Nash equilibrium (NE) solutions ensuring fairness and operational stability. Comprehensive case studies on integrated 10-node power distribution networks with 7-node and 20-node gas networks demonstrate that the algorithm converges within 10 iterations with a residual error below [Formula: see text]. The proposed framework effectively ensures market fairness by reducing the cost disparity between isomorphic agents to zero.

Generalized Nash equilibrium problems (GNEPs) allow, in contrast to standard Nash equilibrium problems, a dependence of the strategy space of one player from the decisions of the other players. In this paper, we consider jointly convex GNEPs which form an important subclass of the general GNEPs. Based on a regularized Nikaido-Isoda function, we present two (nonsmooth) reformulations of this class of GNEPs, one reformulation being a constrained optimization problem and the other one being an unconstrained optimization problem. While most approaches in the literature compute only a so-called normalized Nash equilibrium, which is a subset of all solutions, our two approaches have the property that their minima characterize the set of all solutions of a GNEP. We also investigate the smoothness properties of our two optimization problems and show that both problems are continuous under a Slater-type condition and, in fact, piecewise continuously differentiable under the constant rank constraint qualification. Finally, we present some numerical results based on our unconstrained optimization reformulation.

In this paper, we consider power control for the uplink of a direct-sequence code-division multiple-access data network. In the uplink, the purpose of power control is for each user to transmit enough power so that it can achieve the required quality of service without causing unnecessary interference to other users in the system. One method that has been very successful in solving this purpose for power control is the game-theoretic approach. The problem for power control is modified as a Nash equilibrium problem in which each user can choose its transmit power in order to maximize its own utility, and a Nash equilibrium is an ideal solution of the power-control game. We present a noncooperative power-control game in which each user can choose the transmit power in a way that it gets the sufficient signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and maximizes its own utility. To ensure the existence of a solution, we also propose the variational inequality problem which is connected with the proposed game. On a linear receiver, we deal with the matched filter receiver. Next we present a new ergodic algorithm for the proposed power control because the existing iterative algorithms can not be applied effectively to the proposed power control. We also present convergence analysis for the proposed algorithm. In addition, applying the proposed algorithm to the proposed power control, we provide numerical examples for the transmit power, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and so on. Numerical results for the proposed algorithm shall show that as compared with the existing power-control game and its method, all users in the network can enjoy the sufficient signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and achieve the required quality of service.