A demand adjustment process

The aspiration approach to cooperative games, which has been studied by a number of authors, including Cross, Turbay, Albers, Selten and Bennett, presumes that players in a game bargain over their reservation prices, or aspirations. A number of aspiration-based solution concepts have been put forth, and aspiration solutions have been connected to non-cooperative bargaining models. Missing in this approach has been theory of how aspirations themselves arise. The present paper is an attempt to fill this gap. It describes a very general demand adjustment process, using the framework of set-valued dynamical systems developed by Maschler and Peleg. This demand adjustment process always converges; sufficient conditions are given in order that it converge to an aspiration, and that it converge in a finite number of steps.     

The restricted core of games on distributive lattices: how to share benefits in a hierarchy

Finding a solution concept is one of the central problems in cooperative game theory, and the notion of core is the most popular solution concept since it is based on some rationality condition. In many real situations, not all possible coalitions can form, so that classical TU-games cannot be used. An interesting case is when possible coalitions are defined through a partial ordering of the players (or hierarchy). Then feasible coalitions correspond to teams of players, that is, one or several players with all their subordinates. In these situations, the core in its usual formulation may be unbounded, making its use difficult in practice. We propose a new notion of core, called the restricted core, which imposes efficiency of the allocation at each level of the hierarchy, is always bounded, and answers the problem of sharing benefits in a hierarchy. We show that the core we defined has properties very close to the classical case, with respect to marginal vectors, the Weber set, and balancedness.     

Cooperative games of choosing partners and forming coalitions in the marketplace

Two games of interacting between a coalition of players in a marketplace and the residual players acting there are discussed, along with two approaches to fair imputation of gains of coalitions in cooperative games that are based on the concepts of the Shapley vector and core of a cooperative game. In the first game, which is an antagonistic one, the residual players try to minimize the coalition's gain, whereas in the second game, which is a noncooperative one, they try to maximize their own gain as a coalition. A meaningful interpretation of possible relations between gains and Nash equilibrium strategies in both games considered as those played between a coalition of firms and its surrounding in a particular marketplace in the framework of two classes of n-person games is presented. A particular class of games of choosing partners and forming coalitions in which models of firms operating in the marketplace are those with linear constraints and utility functions being sums of linear and bilinear functions of two corresponding vector arguments is analyzed, and a set of maximin problems on polyhedral sets of connected strategies which the problem of choosing a coalition for a particular firm is reducible to are formulated based on the firm models of the considered kind.     

Optimal coalition formation and surplus distribution: Two sides of one coin

A fuzzy coalitional game represents a situation in which players can vary the intensity at which they participate in the coalitions accessible to them, as opposed to the treatment as a binary choice in the non-fuzzy (crisp) game. Building on the property - not made use of so far in the literature of fuzzy games - that a fuzzy game can be represented as a convex program, this paper shows that the optimum of such a program determines the optimal coalitions as well as the optimal rewards for the players, two sides of one coin. Furthermore, this program is seen to provide a unifying framework for representing the core, the least core, and the (fuzzy) nucleolus, among others. Next, we derive conditions for uniqueness of core rewards and to deal with non-uniqueness we introduce a family of parametric perturbations of the convex program that encompasses a large number of well-known concepts for selection from the core, including the Dutta-Ray solution (Dutta and Ray, 1989), the equal sacrifice solution (Yu, 1973), the equal division solution (Selten, 1972) and the tau-value (Tijs, 1981). We also generalize the concept of the Grand Coalition of contracting players by allowing for multiple technologies, and we specify the conditions for this allocation to be unique and Egalitarian. Finally, we show that our formulation offers a natural extension to existing models of production economies with threats and division rules for common surplus.     

Game theoretic approach for fertilizer application: looking for the propensity to cooperate

This paper continues the research implemented in previous work of (Schreider et al. in Environ. Model. Assess. 15(4):223–238, 2010) where a game theoretic model for optimal fertilizer application in the Hopkins River catchment was formulated, implemented and solved for its optimal strategies. In that work, the authors considered farmers from this catchment as individual players whose objective is to maximize their objective functions which are constituted from two components: economic gain associated with the application of fertilizers which contain phosphorus to the soil and environmental harms associated with this application. The environmental losses are associated with the blue-green algae blooming of the coastal waterways due to phosphorus exported from upstream areas of the catchment. In the previous paper, all agents are considered as rational players and two types of equilibria were considered: fully non-cooperative Nash equilibrium and cooperative Pareto optimum solutions. Among the plethora of Pareto optima, the solution corresponding to the equally weighted individual objective functions were selected. In this paper, the cooperative game approach involving the formation of coalitions and modeling of characteristic value function will be applied and Shapley values for the players obtained. A significant contribution of this approach is the construction of a characteristic function which incorporates both the Nash and Pareto equilibria, showing that it is superadditive. It will be shown that this approach will allow each players to obtain payoffs which strictly dominate their payoffs obtained from their Nash equilibria.     

The Shapley value for cooperative games under precedence constraints

Cooperative games are considered where only those coalitions of players are feasible that respect a given precedence structure on the set of players. Strengthening the classical symmetry axiom, we obtain three axioms that give rise to a unique Shapley value in this model. The Shapley value is seen to reflect the expected marginal contribution of a player to a feasible random coalition, which allows us to evaluate the Shapley value nondeterministically. We show that every exact algorithm for the Shapley value requires an exponential number of operations already in the classical case and that even restriction to simple games is #P-hard in general. Furthermore, we outline how the multi-choice cooperative games of Hsiao and Raghavan can be treated in our context, which leads to a Shapley value that does not depend on pre-assigned weights. Finally, the relationship between the Shapley value and the permission value of Gilles, Owen and van den Brink is discussed. Both refer to formally similar models of cooperative games but reflect complementary interpretations of the precedence constraints and thus give rise to fundamentally different solution concepts.     

Dynamic resource allocation in fuzzy coalitions: a game theoretic model

We introduce an efficient and dynamic resource allocation mechanism within the framework of a cooperative game with fuzzy coalitions (cooperative fuzzy game). A fuzzy coalition in a resource allocation problem can be so defined that membership grades of the players in it are proportional to the fractions of their total resources. We call any distribution of the resources possessed by the players, among a prescribed number of coalitions, a fuzzy coalition structure and every membership grade (equivalently fraction of the total resources), a resource investment. It is shown that this resource investment is influenced by the satisfaction of the players in regard to better performance under a cooperative setup. Our model is based on the real life situations, where possibly one or more players compromise on their resource investments in order to help forming coalitions.     

The least square prenucleolus and the least square nucleolus. Two values for TU games based on the excess vector

The nucleolus and the prenucleolus are solution concepts for TU games based on the excess vector that can be associated to any payoff vector. Here we explore some solution concepts resulting from a payoff vector selection based also on the excess vector but by means of an assessment of their relative fairness different from that given by the lexicographical order. We take the departure consisting of choosing the payoff vector which minimizes the variance of the resulting excesses of the coalitions. This procedure yields two interesting solution concepts, both a prenucleolus-like and a nucleolus-like notion, depending on which set is chosen to set up the minimizing problem: the set of efficient payoff vectors or the set of inputations. These solution concepts, which, paralleling the prenucleolus and the nucleolus, we call least square prenucleolus and least square nucleolus, are easy to calculate and exhibit nice properties. Different axiomatic characterizations of the former are established, some of them by means of consistency for a reasonable reduced game concept.     

The Harsanyi paradox and the “right to talk” in bargaining among coalitions

We describe a coalitional value from a non-cooperative point of view, assuming coalitions are formed for the purpose of bargaining. The idea is that all the players have the same chances to make proposals. This means that players maintain their own “right to talk” when joining a coalition. The resulting value coincides with the weighted Shapley value in the game between coalitions, with weights given by the size of the coalitions. Moreover, the Harsanyi paradox (forming a coalition may be disadvantageous) disappears for convex games.     

On bargaining position descriptions in non-transferable utility games

We present a generalization to the Harsanyi solution for non-transferable utility (NTU) games based on non-symmetry among the players. Our notion of non-symmetry is presented by a configuration of weights which correspond to players' relative bargaining power in various coalitions. We show not only that our solution (i.e., the bargaining position solution) generalizes the Harsanyi solution, (and thus also the Shapley value), but also that almost all the non-symmetric generalizations of the Shapley value for transferable utility games known in the literature are in fact bargaining position solutions. We also show that the non-symmetric Nash solution for the bargaining problem is also a special case of our general solution. We use our general representation of non-symmetry to make a detailed comparison of all the recent extensions of the Shapley value using both a direct and an axiomatic approach.     

Theτ-value for games on matroids

In the classical model of games with transferable utility one assumes that each subgroup of players can form and cooperate to obtain its value. However, we can think that in some situations this assumption is not realistic, that is, not all coalitions are feasible. This suggests that it is necessary to raise the whole question of generalizing the concept of transferable utility game, and therefore to introduce new solution concepts. In this paper we define games on matroids and extend theτ-value as a compromise value for these games. This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministery of Science and Technology under grant SEC2000-1243.     

Weighted nucleoli

Cooperative games in characteristic function form (TU games) are considered. We allow for variable populations or carriers. Weighted nucleoli are defined via weighted excesses for coalitions. A solution satisfies the Null Player Out (NPO) property, if elimination of a null player does not affect the payoffs of the other players. For any single-valued and efficient solution, the NPO property implies the null player property. We show that a weighted nucleolus has the null player property if and only if the weights of multi-player coalitions are weakly decreasing with respect to coalition inclusion. Weighted nucleoli possessing the NPO-property can be characterized by means of a multiplicative formula for the weights of the multi-player coalitions and a restrictive condition on the weights of one-player coalitions. Received: March 1997/Final version: November 1998     

Cooperation in dividing the cake

This paper defines models of cooperation among players partitioning a completely divisible good (such as a cake or a piece of land). The novelty of our approach lies in the players’ ability to form coalitions before the actual division of the good with the aim to maximize the average utility of the coalition. A social welfare function which takes into account coalitions drives the division. In addition, we derive a cooperative game which measures the performance of each coalition. This game is compared with the game in which players start cooperating only after the good has been portioned and has been allocated among the players. We show that a modified version of the game played before the division outperforms the game played after the division.     

Axiomatizations of the Shapley value for games on augmenting systems

This paper deals with cooperative games in which only certain coalitions are allowed to form. There have been previous models developed to confront the problem of unallowable coalitions. Games restricted by a communication graph were introduced by Myerson and Owen. In their model, the feasible coalitions are those that induce connected subgraphs. Another type of model is introduced in Gilles, Owen and van den Brink. In their model, the possibilities of coalition formation are determined by the positions of the players in a so-called permission structure. Faigle proposed another model for cooperative games defined on lattice structures. We introduce a combinatorial structure called augmenting system which is a generalization of the antimatroid structure and the system of connected subgraphs of a graph. In this framework, the Shapley value of games on augmenting systems is introduced and two axiomatizations of this value are showed.     

Solution concepts in vector optimization: a fresh look at an old story

Over the past decades various solution concepts for vector optimization problems have been established and used: among them are efficient, weakly efficient and properly efficient solutions. In contrast to the classical approach, we define a solution to be a set of efficient solutions on which the infimum of the objective function with respect to an appropriate complete lattice (the space of self-infimal sets) is attained. The set of weakly efficient solutions is not considered to be a solution, but weak efficiency is essential in the construction of the complete lattice. In this way, two classic concepts are involved in a common approach. Several different notions of semicontinuity are compared. Using the space of self-infimal sets, we can show that various originally different concepts coincide. A Weierstrass existence result is proved for our solution concept. A slight relaxation of the solution concept yields a relationship to properly efficient solutions.     

The core of games on ordered structures and graphs

In cooperative games, the core is the most popular solution concept, and its properties are well known. In the classical setting of cooperative games, it is generally assumed that all coalitions can form, i.e., they are all feasible. In many situations, this assumption is too strong and one has to deal with some unfeasible coalitions. Defining a game on a subcollection of the power set of the set of players has many implications on the mathematical structure of the core, depending on the precise structure of the subcollection of feasible coalitions. Many authors have contributed to this topic, and we give a unified view of these different results.     

The core of games on ordered structures and graphs

In cooperative games, the core is the most popular solution concept, and its properties are well known. In the classical setting of cooperative games, it is generally assumed that all coalitions can form, i.e., they are all feasible. In many situations, this assumption is too strong and one has to deal with some unfeasible coalitions. Defining a game on a subcollection of the power set of the set of players has many implications on the mathematical structure of the core, depending on the precise structure of the subcollection of feasible coalitions. Many authors have contributed to this topic, and we give a unified view of these different results.