A QPTAS for-envy-free profit-maximizing pricing on line graphs

Abstract

We consider the problem of pricing edges of a line graph so as to maximize the profit made from selling intervals to single-minded customers. An instance is given by a set E of n edges with a limited supply for each edge, and a set of m clients, where each client j specifies one interval of E she is interested in and a budget B j which is the maximum price she is willing to pay for that interval. An envy-free pricing is one in which every customer is allocated (possibly empty) interval maximizing her utility. Recently, Grandoni and Rothvoss (SODA 2011) gave a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) for the unlimited supply case with running time. By utilizing the known hierarchical decomposition of doubling metrics, we give a PTAS with running time. We then consider the limited supply case, and the notion of-envy-free pricing in which a customer gets an allocation maximizing her utility within an additive error of. For this case we develop an approximation scheme with running time, where is the maximum ratio of the budgets of any two customers demanding edge e. This yields a PTAS in the uniform budget case, and a quasi-PTAS for the general case. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.