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arXiv · 2503.00078

Equilibrium and Selfish Behavior in Network Contagion

Yi Zhang·Sanjiv Kapoor
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Abstract

In this paper we consider non-atomic games in populations that are provided with a choice of preventive policies to act against a contagion spreading amongst interacting populations, be it biological organisms or connected computing devices. The spreading model of the contagion is the standard SIR model. Each participant of the population has a choice from amongst a set of precautionary policies with each policy presenting a payoff or utility, which we assume is the same within each group, the risk being the possibility of infection. The policy groups interact with each other. We also define a network model to model interactions between different population sets. The population sets reside at nodes of the network and follow policies available at that node. We define game-theoretic models and study the inefficiency of allowing for individual decision making, as opposed to centralized control. We study the computational aspects as well.

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Yi Zhang, Sanjiv Kapoor. 2025-02-27. Equilibrium and Selfish Behavior in Network Contagion. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00078

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