It is known that finding a Nash equilibrium for win-lose bimatrix
games, i.e., two-player games where the players' payoffs are zero
and one, is complete for the class PPAD.

We describe a linear time algorithm which computes a Nash
equilibrium for win-lose bimatrix games where the number of winning
positions ... more >>>

The folk theorem suggests that finding Nash Equilibria
in repeated games should be easier than in one-shot games. In
contrast, we show that the problem of finding any (epsilon) Nash
equilibrium for a three-player infinitely-repeated game is
computationally intractable (even when all payoffs are in
{-1,0,-1}), unless all of PPAD ... more >>>

We initiate the study of the relationship between two complexity classes, BQP
(Bounded-Error Quantum Polynomial-Time) and PPAD (Polynomial Parity Argument,
Directed). We first give a conjecture that PPAD is contained in BQP, and show
a necessary and sufficient condition for the conjecture to hold. Then we prove
that the conjecture ... more >>>

We prove that finding a Nash equilibrium of a game is hard, assuming the existence of indistinguishability obfuscation and injective one-way functions with sub-exponential hardness. We do so by showing how these cryptographic primitives give rise to a hard computational problem that lies in the complexity class PPAD, for which ... more >>>

Computational complexity is the subfield of computer science that rigorously studies the intrinsic difficulty of computational problems. This survey explains how complexity theory defines “hard problems”; applies these concepts to several equilibrium computation problems; and discusses implications for computation, games, and behavior. We assume minimal prior background in computer science.

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Local search proved to be an extremely useful tool when facing hard optimization problems (e.g. via the simplex algorithm, simulated annealing, or genetic algorithms). Although powerful, it has its limitations: there are functions for which exponentially many queries are needed to find a local optimum. In many contexts the optimization ... more >>>

The complexity class PPAD is usually defined in terms of the END-OF-LINE problem, in which we are given a concise representation of a large directed graph having indegree and outdegree at most 1, and a known source, and we seek some other degree-1 vertex. We show that variants where we ... more >>>

The Fiat-Shamir heuristic transforms a public-coin interactive proof into a non-interactive argument, by replacing the verifier with a cryptographic hash function that is applied to the protocol’s transcript. Constructing hash functions for which this transformation is sound is a central and long-standing open question in cryptography.

We show that ... more >>>