On Variants of Network Flow Stability

Abstract: We consider a general stable flow problem in a directed and capacitated network, where each vertex has a strict preference list over the incoming and outgoing edges. A flow is stable if no group of vertices forming a path can mutually benefit by rerouting the flow. Motivated by applications in supply chain networks, we generalize the traditional Kirchhoff's law, requiring the outflow is equal to the inflow at every nonterminal node, to a monotone piecewise linear relationship between the inflows and the outflows. We show the existence of a stable flow using Scarf's Lemma, and provide a polynomial time algorithm to find such a stable flow. We further show that finding a minimum cost generalized stable network is NP-hard, while the problem is polynomial time solvable for the traditional stable flow satisfying Kirchhoff's law.