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Minimal Subsidies in Expense Sharing Games

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Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 6386))

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Abstract

A key solution concept in cooperative game theory is the core. The core of an expense sharing game contains stable allocations of the total cost to the participating players, such that each subset of players pays at most what it would pay if acting on its own. Unfortunately, some expense sharing games have an empty core, meaning that the total cost is too high to be divided in a stable manner. In such cases, an external entity could choose to induce stability using an external subsidy. We call the minimal subsidy required to make the core of a game non-empty the Cost of Stability (CoS), adopting a recently coined term for surplus sharing games.

We provide bounds on the CoS for general, subadditive and anonymous games, discuss the special case of Facility Games, as well as consider the complexity of computing the CoS of the grand coalition and of coalitional structures.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Reshef Meir & Jeffrey S. Rosenschein

  2. Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK

    Yoram Bachrach

Authors
  1. Reshef Meir
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  2. Yoram Bachrach
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  3. Jeffrey S. Rosenschein
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of Ioannina, Dourouti University Campus, 45110, Ioannina, Greece

    Spyros Kontogiannis

  2. Department of Informatics and Telecommunications Panepistimiopolis, Ilissia, Professor, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15784, Athens, Greece

    Elias Koutsoupias

  3. Computer Engineering and Informatics Department (CEID), University of Patras, 26500, Patras, Greece

    Paul G. Spirakis

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Meir, R., Bachrach, Y., Rosenschein, J.S. (2010). Minimal Subsidies in Expense Sharing Games. In: Kontogiannis, S., Koutsoupias, E., Spirakis, P.G. (eds) Algorithmic Game Theory. SAGT 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6386. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16170-4_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16170-4_30

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-16169-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-16170-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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