Multiplicative Weights Update with Constant Step-Size in Congestion Games: Convergence, Limit Cycles and Chaos

The Multiplicative Weights Update (MWU) method is a ubiquitous meta-algorithm that works as follows: A distribution is maintained on a certain set, and at each step the probability assigned to element γ is multiplied by (1 -ε C(γ))>0 where C(γ) is the "cost" of element γ and then rescaled to ensure that the new values form a distribution. We analyze MWU in congestion games where agents use textitarbitrary admissible constants as learning rates ε and prove convergence to textitexact Nash equilibria. Our proof leverages a novel connection between MWU and the Baum-Welch algorithm, the standard instantiation of the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for hidden Markov models (HMM). Interestingly, this convergence result does not carry over to the nearly homologous MWU variant where at each step the probability assigned to element γ is multiplied by (1 -ε)C(γ) even for the most innocuous case of two-agent, two-strategy load balancing games, where such dynamics can provably lead to limit cycles or even chaotic behavior.