Market equilibrium via a primal-dual algorithm for a convex program

  • Nikhil Devanur ,
  • Christos H. Papadimitriou ,
  • Amin Saberi ,
  • Vijay V. Vazirani

J. ACM | , Vol 55

We give the first polynomial time algorithm for exactly computing an equilibrium for the linear utilities case of the market model defined by Fisher. Our algorithm uses the primal–dual paradigm in the enhanced setting of KKT conditions and convex programs. We pinpoint the added difficulty raised by this setting and the manner in which our algorithm circumvents it.