Induced Rules for Minimum Cost Spanning Tree Problems:towards Merge-proofness and Coalitional Stability

This paper examines cost allocation rules for minimum cost spanning tree (MCST) problems, focusing on the properties of merge-proofness and coalitional stability. Merge-proofness ensures that no coalition of agents has the incentive to merge before participating in the cost allocation process. On the other hand, coalitional stability ensures that no coalition has the incentive to withdraw from the cost allocation process after the cost allocation proposal is made. We propose a novel class of rules called induced rules, which are derived recursively from base rules designed for two-person MCST problems. We demonstrate that induced rules exhibit both merge-proofness and coalitional stability within a restricted domain, provided that the corresponding base rules satisfy specific conditions

A monotonic and merge-proof rule in minimum cost spanning tree situations

We present a new model for cost sharing in minimum cost spanning tree problems, so that the planner can identify the agents that merge. Under this new framework, and as opposed to the traditional model, there exist rules that satisfy merge-proofness. Besides, by strengthening this property and adding some other properties, such as population-monotonicity and solidarity, we characterize a unique rule that coincides with the weighted Shapley value of an associated cost game

Appointment Games in Fixed-Route Traveling Salesman Problems and the Shapley Value

Starting from her home, a service provider visits several customers, following a predetermined route, and returns home after all customers are visited. The problem is to find a fair allocation of the total cost of this tour among the customers served. A transferable-utility cooperative game can be associated with this cost allocation problem. We introduce a new class of games, which we refer as the fixed-route traveling salesman games with appointments. We study the Shapley Value in this class and show that it is in the core. Our first characterization of the Shapley value involves a property which requires that sponsors do not benefit from mergers, or splitting into a set of sponsors. Our second theorem involves a property which requires that the cost shares of two sponsors who get connected are equally effected. We also show that except for our second theorem, none of our results for appointment games extend to the class of routing games (Potters et al, 1992).fixed-route traveling salesman games, routing games, appointment games, the Shapley value, the core, transferable-utility games, merging and splitting proofness, equal impact, networks, cost allocation.

Characterizing the Shapley Value in Fixed-Route Traveling Salesman Problems with Appointments

Starting from her home, a service provider visits several customers, following a predetermined route, and returns home after all customers are visited. The problem is to ?nd a fair allocation of the total cost of this tour among the customers served. A transferable-utility cooperative game can be associated with this cost allocation problem. We intro- duce a new class of games, which we refer as the fixed-route traveling salesman games with appointments. We characterize the Shapley Value in this class using a property which requires that sponsors do not bene?t from mergers, or splitting into a set of sponsors.Fixed-route travelling salesman games, routing games, appointment games, the Shapley value, the core, transferable-utility games, merging and splitting proofness, networks, cost allocation

Connection Incentives in Cost Sharing Mechanisms with Budgets

In a cost sharing problem on a weighted undirected graph, all other nodes want to connect to the source node for some service. Each edge has a cost denoted by a weight and all the connected nodes should share the total cost for the connectivity. The goal of the existing solutions (e.g. folk solution and cycle-complete solution) is to design cost sharing rules with nice properties, e.g. budget balance and cost monotonicity. However, they did not consider the cases that each non-source node has a budget which is the maximum it can pay for its cost share and may cut its adjacent edges to reduce its cost share. In this paper, we design two cost sharing mechanisms taking into account the nodes' budgets and incentivizing all nodes to report all their adjacent edges so that we can minimize the total cost for the connectivity.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2201.0597

Cooperative approach to a location problem with agglomeration economies

This paper considers agglomeration economies. A new firm is planning to open a plant in a country divided into several regions. Each firm receives a positive externality if the new plant is located in its region. In a decentralized mechanism, the plant would be opened in the region where the new firm maximizes its individual benefit. Due to the externalities, it could be the case that the aggregate utility of all firms is maximized in a different region. Thus, the firms in the optimal region could transfer something to the new firm in order to incentivize it to open the plant in that region. We propose two rules that provide two different schemes for transfers between firms already located in the country and the newcomer. The first is based on cooperative game theory. This rule coincides with the $$\tau$$ τ -value, the nucleolus, and the per capita nucleolus of the associated cooperative game. The second is defined directly. We provide axiomatic characterizations for both rules. We characterize the core of the cooperative game. We prove that both rules belong to the core.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. GED431B 2019/34Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España | Ref. ECO2017-82241-RConsejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología | Ref. 438366Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España | Ref. PID2020-113440GB-I0

Cooperative approach to a location problem with agglomeration economies

This paper considers agglomeration economies. A new firm is planning to open a plant in a country divided into several regions. Each firm receives a positive externality if the new plant is located in its region. In a decentralized mechanism, the plant would be opened in the region where the new firm maximizes its individual benefit. Due to the externalities, it could be the case that the aggregated utility of all firms is maximized in a different region. Thus, the firms in the optimal region could transfer something to the new firm in order to incentivize it to open the plant in that region. We propose two rules that provide two different schemes for transfers between firms already located in the country and the newcomer. The first is based on cooperative game theory. This rule coincides with the nucleolus and the t-value of the associated cooperative game. The second is defined directly. We provide axiomatic characterizations for both rules. We characterize the core of the cooperative game. We prove that both rules belong to the core

Cost Sharing under Private Costs and Connection Control on Directed Acyclic Graphs

We consider a cost sharing problem on a weighted directed acyclic graph (DAG) with a source node to which all the other nodes want to connect. The cost (weight) of each edge is private information reported by multiple contractors, and among them, only one contractor is selected as the builder. All the nodes except for the source need to share the total cost of the used edges. However, they may block others' connections to the source by strategically cutting their outgoing edges to reduce their cost share, which may increase the total cost of connectivity. To minimize the total cost of connectivity, we design a cost sharing mechanism to incentivize each node to offer all its outgoing edges and each contractor to report all the edges' weights truthfully, and show the properties of the proposed mechanism. In addition, our mechanism outperforms the two benchmark mechanisms

Cooperative and axiomatic approaches to the knapsack allocation problem

In the knapsack problem a group of agents want to fill a knapsack with several goods. Two issues should be considered. Firstly, to decide optimally the goods selected for the knapsack, which has been studied in many papers. Secondly, to divide the total revenue among the agents, which has been studied in few papers (including this one). We assign to each knapsack problem several cooperative games. For some of them we prove that the core is non-empty. Later, we follow the axiomatic approach. We propose two rules. The first one is based on the optimal solution of the knapsack problem. The second one is the Shapley value of the so called optimistic game. We offer axiomatic characterizations of both rules

Cooperative and axiomatic approaches to the knapsack allocation problem

In the knapsack problem a group of agents want to fill a knapsack with several goods. Two issues should be considered. Firstly, to decide optimally the goods selected for the knapsack, which has been studied in many papers. Secondly, to divide the total revenue among the agents, which has been studied in few papers (including this one). We assign to each knapsack problem several cooperative games. For some of them we prove that the core is non-empty. Later, we follow the axiomatic approach. We propose two rules. The first one is based on the optimal solution of the knapsack problem. The second one is the Shapley value of the so called optimistic game. We offer axiomatic characterizations of both rules