  Min-max optimization problems (i.e., min-max games) have been attracting a
great deal of attention because of their applicability to a wide range of
machine learning problems. Although significant progress has been made
recently, the literature to date has focused on games with independent strategy
sets; little is known about solving games with dependent strategy sets, which
can be characterized as min-max Stackelberg games. We introduce two first-order
methods that solve a large class of convex-concave min-max Stackelberg games,
and show that our methods converge in polynomial time. Min-max Stackelberg
games were first studied by Wald, under the posthumous name of Wald's maximin
model, a variant of which is the main paradigm used in robust optimization,
which means that our methods can likewise solve many convex robust optimization
problems. We observe that the computation of competitive equilibria in Fisher
markets also comprises a min-max Stackelberg game. Further, we demonstrate the
efficacy and efficiency of our algorithms in practice by computing competitive
equilibria in Fisher markets with varying utility structures. Our experiments
suggest potential ways to extend our theoretical results, by demonstrating how
different smoothness properties can affect the convergence rate of our
algorithms.
