Exact penalty functions and calmness for mathematical programming under nonlinear perturbations

In the present paper, the effects of nonlinear perturbations of constraint systems are considered over the relationship between calmness and exact penalization, within the context of mathematical programming with equilibrium constraints. Two counterexamples are provided showing that the crucial link between the existence of penalty functions and the property of calmness for perturbed problems is broken in the presence of general perturbations. Then, some properties from variational analysis are singled out, which are able to restore to a certain extent the broken link. Consequently, conditions on the value function associated to perturbed optimization problems are investigated in order to guarantee the occurrence of the above properties.