Minimal exact balancedness

Abstract

To verify whether a transferable utility game is exact, one has to check a linear inequalityfor each exact balanced collection of coalitions. This paper studies the structure andproperties of the class of exact balanced collections. Comparing the definition of exactbalanced collections with the definition of balanced collections, the weight vector of abalanced collection must be positive whereas the weight vector for an exact balancedcollection may contain one negative weight. We investigate minimal exact balanced collections, and show that only these collections are needed to obtain exactness. The relation between minimality of an exact balanced collection and uniqueness of the corresponding weight vector is analyzed. We show how the class of minimal exact balanced collections can be partitioned into three basic types each of which can be systematically generated.operations research and management science;