No advantageous merging in minimum cost spanning tree problems

Abstract

In the context of cost sharing in minimum cost spanning tree problems, we introduce a property called No Advantageous Merging. This property implies that no group of agents can be better off claiming to be a single node. We show that the sharing rule that assigns to each agent his own connection cost (the Bird rule) satisfies this property. Moreover, we provide a characterization of the Bird rule using No Advantageous Merging.Minimum cost spanning tree problems; cost sharing; Bird rule; No Advantageous Merging