Entrepreneurship Facility-Activation Games

Entrepreneurship has long been a driving force for innovation and economic growth. While it has been extensively studied by economists, it has not received much attention in the AGT community. We define and study an entrepreneurship facility-activation game, played by a single entrepreneur and n users. The entrepreneur may activate and close facilities, and each user should select one active facility. This setting combines a weighted singleton congestion game played by the users, with a revenue maximization game played by the entrepreneur, who dynamically determines the set of active facilities in response to the users' assignment. We analyze the resulting game from multiple perspectives. From the entrepreneur's perspective, maximizing her profit, we provide an asymptotically tight Theta(root n)-approximation algorithm with and without stability restrictions. For the total welfare problem of minimizing the total users cost and facilities activation cost, we provide tight linear bounds for the PoA and PoS. Additionally, we analyze the computational complexity of both the social optimum and the cheapest stable solution. We distinguish between games with weighted and unweighted users, with and without symmetric strategies, and between arbitrary and uniform facility activation costs. Our results highlight the challenges of revenue maximization for entrepreneurs and the high impact of entrepreneurship on the total welfare and the equilibrium efficiency.