The Component Fairness Solution for Cycle- Free Graph Games

In this paper we study cooperative games with limited cooperation possibilities, representedby an undirected cycle-free communication graph. Players in the game can cooperate if andonly if they are connected in the graph, i.e. they can communicate with one another. Weintroduce a new single-valued solution concept, the component fairness solution. Our solution is characterized by component efficiency and component fairness. The interpretationof component fairness is that deleting a link between two players yields for both resultingcomponents the same average change in payoff, where the average is taken over the players in the component. Component fairness replaces the axiom of fairness characterizing the Myerson value, where the players whose link is deleted face the same loss in payoff. Thecomponent fairness solution is always in the core of the restricted game in case the gameis superadditive and can be easily computed as the average of n specific marginal vectors,where n is the number of players. We also show that the component fairness solution canbe generated by a specific distribution of the Harsanyi-dividends.operations research and management science;

A Fixed Point Theorem for Discontinuous Functions

In this paper we prove the following fixed point theorem. Consider a non-empty bounded polyhedron P and a function Æ : P → P such that for every x є P for which Æ (x) ≠ x there exists δ > 0 such that for all y, z є B (x, δ) ∩ P it holds that (Æ(y)-y)2 (Æ(z)-z) ≤ 0, where B (x, δ) is the ball in Rⁿ centered at x with radius δ . Then Æ has a fixed point, i.e., there exists a point x* є P satisfying Æ (x*) = x* . The condition allows for various discontinuities and irregularities of the function. In case f is a continuous function, the condition is automatically satisfied and thus the Brouwer fixed point theorem is implied by the result. We illustrate that a function that satisfies the condition is not necessarily upper or lower semi-continuous. A game-theoretic application is also discussed.mathematical economics and econometrics ;

Observations of OH in comet Levy with the Nancay radio telescope

Due to extremely favorable excitation conditions, comet Levy (1990c) exhibited in August-September 1990 the strongest OH 18-cm signal ever recorded in a comet at the Nancay radio telescope. This unique opportunity was used to measure the OH satellite lines at 1612 and 1721 MHz, to perform extensive mapping of the OH radio emission and to make a sensitive evaluation of the cometary magnetic field, of the H2O outflow velocity and of the OH production rate

The Average Tree Solution for Cooperative Games with Communication Structure

We study cooperative games with communication structure, represented by an undirectedgraph. Players in the game are able to cooperate only if they can form a network in the graph. A single-valued solution, the average tree solution, is proposed for this class ofgames. Given the graph structure we define a collection of spanning trees, where eachspanning tree specifies a particular way by which players communicate and determines a payoff vector of marginal contributions of all the players. The average tree solution is defined to be the average of all these payoff vectors. It is shown that if a game has acomplete communication structure, then the proposed solution coincides with the Shapleyvalue, and that if the game has a cycle-free communication structure, it is the solutionproposed by Herings, van der Laan and Talman (2008). We introduce the notion of linkconvexity, under which the game is shown to have a non-empty core and the average tree solution lies in the core. In general, link-convexity is weaker than convexity. For games with a cycle-free communication structure, link-convexity is even weaker than super-additivity.operations research and management science;