A Branch and Bound-Based Algorithm for the Weak Linear Bilevel Programming Problems

Most real-world optimization problems are hierarchical involving non-cooperative objectives. Many of these problems can be formulated in terms of the first (upper level) objective function being minimized over the solution set mapping of the second (lower level) optimization problem. Often the upper level decision maker is risk-averse. The resulting class of problem is named weak bilevel programming problem. This paper presents a new algorithm which embeds a penalty function method into a branch and bound algorithm to deal with a weak linear bilevel programming problem. An example illustrates the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.