Efficiency analysis of load balancing games with and without activation costs

In this paper, we study two models of resource allocation games: the classical load balancing game and its new variant involving resource activation costs. The resources we consider are identical and the social costs of the games are utilitarian, which are the average of all individual players’ costs. Using the social costs we assess the quality of pure Nash equilibria in terms of the price of anarchy (PoA) and the price of stability (PoS). For each game problem, we identify suitable problem parameters and provide a parametric bound on the PoA and the PoS. In the case of the load balancing game, the parametric bounds we provide are sharp and asymptotically tight.