On robustness and dynamics in (un)balanced coalitional games

Abstract

We build upon control theoretic concepts like robustness and dynamics to better accommodate all the situations where the coalitions’ values are uncertain and subject to changes over time. The proposed robust dynamic framework provides an alternative perspective on the study of sequences of coalitional games or interval valued games. For a sequence of coalitional games, either balanced or unbalanced, we analyze the key roles of instantaneous and average games. Instantaneous games are obtained by freezing the coalitions’ values at a given time and come into play when coalitions’ values are known. On the other hand, average games are derived from averaging the coalitions’ values up to a given time and are key part of our analysis when coalitions’ values are unknown. The main theoretical contribution of our paper is a design method of allocation rules that return solutions in the core and/or $\epsilon$-core of the instantaneous and average games. Theoretical results are then specialized to a simulated example to shed light on the impact of the design method and on the performance of the resulting allocation rules