Multi-population congestion games with incomplete information

Abstract

Congestion games have many important applications to systems where only limited knowledge may be available to players. Here we study traffic networks with multiple origin-destination pairs, relaxing the simplifying assumption of agents having complete knowledge of the network structure. We identify a ubiquitous class of networks, i.e., rings, for which we can safely increase the agents' knowledge without affecting their own overall performance - known as immunity to Informational Braess' Paradox - closing a gap in the literature. By extension of this performance measure to include the welfare of all agents, i.e., minimisation of social cost, we show that IBP is a widespread phenomenon and no network is immune to it.