Title
On the Complexity of the Highway Pricing Problem
Abstract
The highway pricing problem asks for prices to be determined for segments of a single highway such as to maximize the revenue obtainable from a given set of customers with known valuations. The problem is NP-hard and a recent quasi-PTAS suggests that a PTAS might be in reach. Yet, so far it has resisted any attempt for constant-factor approximation algorithms. We relate the tractability of the problem to structural properties of customers' valuations. We show that the problem becomes NP-hard as soon as the average valuations of customers are not homogeneous, even under further restrictions such as monotonicity. Moreover, we derive an efficient approximation algorithm, parameterized along the inhomogeneity of customers' valuations. Finally, we discuss extensions of our results that go beyond the highway pricing problem.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1007/978-3-642-11266-9_39
SOFSEM
Keywords
DocType
Volume
publication,computational complexity,approximation algorithm
Conference
5901
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
5901
0302-9743
2
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.41
7
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alexander Grigoriev120324.23
Joyce Van Loon2344.03
Marc Uetz345643.99