Cooperation and allocation

This thesis deals with various models of cooperation, including games with transferable utility, games with nontransferable utility, bankruptcy situations, communication situations, spillover games and sequencing situations. The focus is on analysing rules for dividing the profits of cooperation. This analysis is performed in terms of properties that one might require of such an allocation mechanism. In addition, properties of the underlying situations and games are studied.

A Note on NTU Convexity and Population Monotonic Allocation Schemes

cooperative games

Multi-Issue Allocation Games

This paper introduces a new class of transferable-utility games, called multi-issue allocation games.These games arise from various allocation situations and are based on the concepts underlying the bankruptcy model, as introduced by O'Neill (1982).In this model, a perfectly divisible good (estate) has to be divided amongst a given set of agents, each of whom has some claim on the estate.Contrary to the standard bankruptcy model, the current model deals with situations in which the agents' claims are multi-dimensional, where the dimensions correspond to various issues.It is shown that the class of multi-issue allocation games coincides with the class of (nonnegative) exact games.The run-to-the-bank rule is introduced as a solution for multi-issue allocation situations and turns out to be Shapley value of the corresponding game.Finally, this run-to-the-bank rule is characterised by means of a consistency property.game theory;allocation games

On Convexity for NTU-Games

For cooperative games with transferable utility, convexity has turned out to be an important and widely applicable concept.Convexity can be defined in a number of ways, each having its own specific attractions.Basically, these definitions fall into two categories, namely those based on a supermodular interpretation and those based on a marginalistic interpretation.For games with non-transferable utility, however, the literature only offers two kinds of convexity, ordinal and cardinal convexity, which both extend the supermodular interpretation.In this paper, we introduce and analyse three new types of convexity for NTU-games that generalise the marginalistic interpretation of convexity.game theory

Fall Back Equilibrium

Fall back equilibrium is a refinement of the Nash equilibrium concept. In the underly- ing thought experiment each player faces the possibility that, after all players decided on their action, his chosen action turns out to be blocked. Therefore, each player has to decide beforehand on a back-up action, which he plays in case he is unable to play his primary action. In this paper we introduce the concept of fall back equilibrium and show that the set of fall back equilibria is a non-empty and closed subset of the set of Nash equilibria. We discuss the relations with other equilibrium concepts, and among other results it is shown that each robust equilibrium is fall back and for bimatrix games also each proper equilibrium is a fall back equilibrium. Furthermore, we show that for bimatrix games the set of fall back equilibria is the union of finitely many polytopes, and that the notions of fall back equilibrium and strictly fall back equilibrium coincide. Finally, we allow multiple actions to be blocked, resulting in the notion of complete fall back equilibrium. We show that the set of complete fall back equilibria is a non-empty and closed subset of the set of proper equilibria.strategic game;equilibrium refinement;blocked action;fall back equilibrium

Operations Research Games: A Survey

This paper surveys the research area of cooperative games associated with several types of operations research problems in which various decision makers (players) are involved.Cooperating players not only face a joint optimisation problem in trying, e.g., to minimise total joint costs, but also face an additional allocation problem in how to distribute these joint costs back to the individual players.This interplay between optimisation and allocation is the main subject of the area of operations research games.It is surveyed on the basis of a distinction between the nature of the underlying optimisation problem: connection, routing, scheduling, production and inventory.cooperative games;operational research

Good and Bad Objects: Cardinality-Based Rules

We consider the problem of ranking sets of objects, the members of which are mutually compatible.Assuming that each object is either good or bad, we axiomatically characterize three cardinality-based rules which arise naturally in this dichotomous setting.They are what we call the symmetric difference rule, the lexicographic good-bad rule, and the lexicographic bad-good rule.Each of these rules induces a unique additive separable preference relation over the set of all groups of objects.welfare economics;ranking