Spending Is Not Easier Than Trading: On the Computational Equivalence of Fisher and Arrow-Debreu Equilibria

  • Authors:
  • Xi Chen;Shang-Hua Teng

  • Affiliations:
  • Princeton University,;University of Southern California,

  • Venue:
  • ISAAC '09 Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

It is a common belief that computing a market equilibrium in Fisher's spending model is easier than computing a market equilibrium in Arrow-Debreu's exchange model. This belief is built on the fact that we have more algorithmic success in Fisher equilibria than Arrow-Debreu equilibria. For example, a Fisher equilibrium in a Leontief market can be found in polynomial time, while it is PPAD-hard to compute an approximate Arrow-Debreu equilibrium in a Leontief market.In this paper, we show that even when all the utilities are additively separable, piecewise-linear and concave, computing an approximate equilibrium in Fisher's model is PPAD-hard. Our result solves a long-term open question on the complexity of market equilibria. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first PPAD-hardness result for Fisher's model.