Bisemivalues for bicooperative games

We introduce bisemivalues for bicooperative games and we also provide an interesting characterization of this kind of values by means of weighting coefficients in a similar way as it was given for semivalues in the context of cooperative games. Moreover, the notion of induced bisemivalues on lower cardinalities also makes sense and an adaptation of Dragan’s recurrence formula is obtained. For the particular case of (p, q)-bisemivalues, a computational procedure in terms of the multilinear extension of the game is given.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Measuring voting power in convex policy spaces

Classical power index analysis considers the individual's ability to influence the aggregated group decision by changing its own vote, where all decisions and votes are assumed to be binary. In many practical applications we have more options than either "yes" or "no". Here we generalize three important power indices to continuous convex policy spaces. This allows the analysis of a collection of economic problems like e.g. tax rates or spending that otherwise would not be covered in binary models.Comment: 31 pages, 9 table

A model of influence with an ordered set of possible actions

In the paper, a yes-no model of influence is generalized to a multi-choice framework. We introduce and study weighted influence indices of a coalition on a player in a social network, where players have an ordered set of possible actions. Each player has an inclination to choose one of the actions. Due to mutual influence among players, the final decision of each player may be different from his original inclination. In a particular case, the decision of the player is closer to the inclination of the influencing coalition than his inclination was, i.e., the distance between the inclinations of the player and of the coalition is greater than the distance between the decision of the player and the inclination of the coalition in question. The weighted influence index which captures such a case is called the weighted positive influence index. We also consider the weighted negative influence index, where the final decision of the player goes farther away from the inclination of the coalition. We consider several influence functions defined in the generalized model of influence and study their properties. The concept of a follower of a given coalition, and its particular case, a perfect follower, are defined. The properties of the set of followers are analyzed.weighted positive influence index; weighted negative influence index; influence function; follower of a coalition; perfect follower; kernel

Measuring Power and Satisfaction in Societies with Opinion Leaders: Dictator and Opinion Leader Properties

A well known and established model in communication policy in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. Opinion leaders are actors in a society who are able to affect the behavior of other members of the society called followers. Hence, opinion leaders might have a considerable impact on the behavior of markets and other social agglomerations being made up of individual actors choosing among a number of alternatives. For marketing or policy purposes it appears to be interesting to investigate the effect of different opinion leader-follower structures in markets or any other collective decision-making situations in a society. We study a two-action model in which the members of a society are to choose one action, for instance, to buy or not to buy a certain joint product, or to vote yes or no on a specific proposal. Each of the actors has an inclination to choose one of the actions. By definition opinion leaders have some power over their followers, and they exercise this power by influencing the behavior of their followers, i.e. their choice of action. After all actors have chosen their actions, a decision-making mechanism determines the collective choice resulting out of the individual choices. Making use of bipartite digraphs we introduce novel satisfaction and power scores which allow us to analyze the actors' satisfaction and power with respect to the collective choice for societies with different opinion leader-follower structures. Moreover, we study common dictator and opinion leader properties of the above scores and illustrate our findings for a society with five members.Bipartite digraph ; influence ; inclination ; collective choice ; opinion leader ; follower ; satisfaction ; power ; dictator properties ; opinion leader properties

Political Influence in Multi-Choice Institutions: Cyclicity, Anonymity and Transitivity

We study political influence in institutions where members choose from among several options their levels of support to a collective goal, these individual choices determining the degree to which the goal is reached. Influence is assessed by newly defined binary relations, each of which compares any two individuals on the basis of their relative performance at a corresponding level of participation. For institutions with three levels of support (e.g., voting games in which each voter may vote "yes", "abstain", or vote "no"), we obtain three influence relations, and show that the strict component of each of them may be cyclical. The cyclicity of these relations contrasts with the transitivity of the unique influence relation of binary voting games. Weak conditions of anonymity are sufficient for each of them to be transitive. We also obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for each of them to be complete. Further, we characterize institutions for which the rankings induced by these relations, and the Banzhaf-Coleman and Shapley-Shubik power indices coincide. We argue that the extension of these relations to firms would be useful in efficiently allocating workers to different units of production. Applications to various forms of political and economic organizations are provided.Level-based influence relations, Multi-choice institutions, cyclicity, anonymity, transitivity

Probabilistic power indices for games with abstention

S'introdueixen vuit índexs de poder que admeten una interpretació probabilística per les normes de votació amb abstenció o amb tres nivells d'aprovació en l'entrada. S'analitzen les semblances i diferències entre els índexs estàndards coneguts pels jocs simples i per les extensions per aquest context més general. Es conclou la feina proporcionant procediments basats en la generació de funcions per jocs(3,2) extensibles a jocs (j,k).Preprin

The Banzhaf value for cooperative and simple multichoice games

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Group Decision and Negotiation. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-019-09651-4.This article proposes a value which can be considered an extension of the Banzhaf value for cooperative games. The proposed value is defined on the class of j-cooperative games, i.e., games in which players choose among a finite set of ordered actions and the result depends only on these elections. If the output is binary, only two options are available, then j-cooperative games become j-simple games. The restriction of the value to j-simple games leads to a power index that can be considered an extension of the Banzhaf power index for simple games. The paper provides an axiomatic characterization for the value and the index which is closely related to the first axiomatization of the Banzhaf value and Banzhaf power index in the respective contexts of cooperative and simple games.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Power in voting rules with abstention: an axiomatization of a two components power index

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-016-2124-5In order to study voting situations when voters can also abstain and the output is binary, i.e., either approval or rejection, a new extended model of voting rule was defined. Accordingly, indices of power, in particular Banzhaf’s index, were considered. In this paper we argue that in this context a power index should be a pair of real numbers, since this better highlights the power of a voter in two different cases, i.e., her being crucial when switching from being in favor to abstain, and from abstain to be contrary. We also provide an axiomatization for both indices, and from this a characterization as well of the standard Banzhaf index (the sum of the former two) is obtained. Some examples are provided to show how the indices behave.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft