The starting point of this volume was a conference entitled "Progress in Mathematical Programming," held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, March 1-4, 1987. The main topic of the conference was developments in the theory and practice of linear programming since Karmarkar's algorithm. There were thirty presentations and approximately fifty people attended. Presentations included new algorithms, new analyses of algorithms, reports on computational experience, and some other topics related to the practice of mathematical programming. Interestingly, most of the progress reported at the conference was on the theoretical side. Several new polynomial algorithms for linear program- ming were presented (Barnes-Chopra-Jensen, Goldfarb-Mehrotra, Gonzaga, Kojima-Mizuno-Yoshise, Renegar, Todd, Vaidya, and Ye). Other algorithms presented were by Betke-Gritzmann, Blum, Gill-Murray-Saunders-Wright, Nazareth, Vial, and Zikan-Cottle. Efforts in the theoretical analysis of algo- rithms were also reported (Anstreicher, Bayer-Lagarias, Imai, Lagarias, Megiddo-Shub, Lagarias, Smale, and Vanderbei). Computational experiences were reported by Lustig, Tomlin, Todd, Tone, Ye, and Zikan-Cottle. Of special interest, although not in the main direction discussed at the conference, was the report by Rinaldi on the practical solution of some large traveling salesman problems. At the time of the conference, it was still not clear whether the new algorithms developed since Karmarkar's algorithm would replace the simplex method in practice. Alan Hoffman presented results on conditions under which linear programming problems can be solved by greedy algorithms.

This volume presents a collection of papers on game theory dedicated to Michael Maschler. Through his dedication and contributions to game theory, Maschler has become an important figure particularly in the area of cooperative games. Game theory has since become an important subject in operations research, economics and management science. As befits such a volume, the main themes covered are cooperative games, coalitions, repeated games, and a cost allocation games. All the contributions are authoritative surveys of a particular topic, so together they will present an invaluable overview of the field to all those working on game theory problems.

Following Karmarkar's 1984 linear programming algorithm, numerous interior-point algorithms have been proposed for various mathematical programming problems such as linear programming, convex quadratic programming and convex programming in general. This monograph presents a study of interior-point algorithms for the linear complementarity problem (LCP) which is known as a mathematical model for primal-dual pairs of linear programs and convex quadratic programs. A large family of potential reduction algorithms is presented in a unified way for the class of LCPs where the underlying matrix has nonnegative principal minors (P0-matrix). This class includes various important subclasses such as positive semi-definite matrices, P-matrices, P*-matrices introduced in this monograph, and column sufficient matrices. The family contains not only the usual potential reduction algorithms but also path following algorithms and a damped Newton method for the LCP. The main topics are global convergence, global linear convergence, and the polynomial-time convergence of potential reduction algorithms included in the family.