Coalitional power indices applied to voting systems

We describe voting mechanisms to study voting systems. The classical power indices applied to simple games just consider parties, players or voters. Here, we also consider games with a priori unions, i.e., coalitions among parties, players or voters. We measure the power of each party, player or voter when there are coalitions among them. In particular, we study real situations of voting systems using extended Shapley–Shubik and Banzhaf indices, the so-called coalitional power indices. We also introduce a dynamic programming to compute them.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Fibonacci sequence for linear structures with two types of components

We investigate binary voting systems with two types of voters and a hierarchy among the members in each type, so that members in one class have more influence or importance than members in the other class. The purpose of this paper is to count, up to isomorphism, the number of these voting systems for an arbitrary number of voters. We obtain a closed formula for the number of these systems, this formula follows a Fibonacci sequence with a smooth polynomial variation on the number of voters.Comment: All the results contained in this file are included in a paper submitted to Annals of Operations Research in October, 2008 on ocasion of the Conference on Applied Mathematical Programming and Modelling, that held in Bratislava in May, 200

An Efficient generic algorithm for the generation of unlabelled cycles

In this report we combine two recent generation algorithms to obtain a new algorithm for the generation of unlabelled cycles. Sawada's algorithm lists all k-ary unlabelled cycles with fixed content, that is, the number of occurences of each symbol is fixed and given a priori. The other algorithm, by the authors, generates all multisets of objects with given total size n from any admissible unlabelled class A. By admissible we mean that the class can be specificied using atomic classes, disjoints unions, products, sequences, (multi)sets, etc. The resulting algorithm, which is the main contribution of this paper, generates all cycles of objects with given total size n from any admissible class A. Given the generic nature of the algorithm, it is suitable for inclusion in combinatorial libraries and for rapid prototyping. The new algorithm incurs constant amortized time per generated cycle, the constant only depending in the class A to which the objects in the cycle belong.Postprint (published version

Combinatorial structures to modeling simple games and applications

We connect three different topics: combinatorial structures, game theory and chemistry. In particular, we establish the bases to represent some simple games, defined as influence games, and molecules, defined from atoms, by using combinatorial structures. First, we characterize simple games as influence games using influence graphs. It let us to modeling simple games as combinatorial structures (from the viewpoint of structures or graphs). Second, we formally define molecules as combinations of atoms. It let us to modeling molecules as combinatorial structures (from the viewpoint of combinations). It is open to generate such combinatorial structures using some specific techniques as genetic algorithms, (meta-)heuristics algorithms and parallel programming, among others.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Combinatorial structures to construct simple games and molecules

We connect three different topics: combinatorial structures, game theory and chemistry. In particular, we establish the bases to represent some simple games, defined as influence games, and molecules, defined from atoms, by using combinatorial structures. First, we characterize simple games as influence games using influence graphs. It let us to modeling simple games as combinatorial structures (from the viewpoint of structures or graphs). Second, we formally define molecules as combinations of atoms. It let us to modeling molecules as combinatorial structures (from the viewpoint of combinations). It is open to generate such combinatorial structures using some specific techniques as genetic algorithms, (meta-) heuristics algorithms and parallel programming, among others.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Measuring satisfaction in societies with opinion leaders and mediators

An opinion leader-follower model (OLF) is a two-action collective decision-making model for societies, in which three kinds of actors are considered:Preprin

Cooperation through social influence

We consider a simple and altruistic multiagent system in which the agents are eager to perform a collective task but where their real engagement depends on the willingness to perform the task of other influential agents. We model this scenario by an influence game, a cooperative simple game in which a team (or coalition) of players succeeds if it is able to convince enough agents to participate in the task (to vote in favor of a decision). We take the linear threshold model as the influence model. We show first the expressiveness of influence games showing that they capture the class of simple games. Then we characterize the computational complexity of various problems on influence games, including measures (length and width), values (Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf) and properties (of teams and players). Finally, we analyze those problems for some particular extremal cases, with respect to the propagation of influence, showing tighter complexity characterizations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft