On the complexity of market equilibria with maximum social welfare

  • Authors:
  • Xiaotie Deng;Li-Sha Huang

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, City Univ. of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China;State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Technology and Systems, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua Univ., Beijing 10084, China

  • Venue:
  • Information Processing Letters
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We consider the computational complexity of the market equilibrium problem by exploring the structural properties of the Leontief exchange economy. We prove that, for economies guaranteed to have a market equilibrium, finding one with maximum social welfare or maximum individual welfare is NP-hard. In addition, we prove that counting the number of equilibrium prices is #P-hard.