S-MODULAR GAMES, WITH QUEUING APPLICATIONS

The notion of S-modularity was developed by Glasserman and Yao [9] in the context of optimal control of queueing networks. S-modularity allo ws the objective function to be supermodular in some variables and sub modular in others. It models both compatible and conflicting incentive s, and hence conveniently accommodates a wide variety of applications. In this paper, we introduce S-modularity into the context of n-player noncooperative games. This generalizes the well-known supermodular ga mes of Topkis [22], where each player maximizes a supermodular payoff function (or equivalently, minimizes a submodular payoff function). We illustrate the theory through a variety of applications in queueing s ystems.