Suppose that the agents of a matching market contact each other randomly and form new pairs if is in their interest. Does such a process always converge to a stable matching if one exists? If so, how quickly? Are some stable matchings more likely to be obtained by this process than others? In...

In this paper we investigate some new applications of Scarf's Lemma. First, we introduce the notion of fractional core for NTU-games, which is always nonempty by the Lemma. Stable allocation is a general solution concept for games where both the players and their possible cooperations can have...

Scarf's algorithm [18] provides fractional core elements for NTU-games. Bir¢ and Fleiner [3] showed that Scarf's algorithm can be extended for capacitated NTU-games. In this setting agents can be involved in more than one coalition at a time, cooperations may be performed with different...

The stable roommates problem with payments has as input a graph G(E,V) with an edge weighting w:E_ùR+ and the problem is to find a stable solution. A solution is a matching M with a vector p.RV that satisfies pu+pv=w(uv) for all uv.M and pu=0 for all u unmatched in M. A solution is stable if it...

A matching game is a cooperative game (N; v) defined on a graph G = (N;E) with an edge weighting w : E ! R+. The player set is N and the value of a coalition S N is dened as the maximum weight of a matching in the subgraph induced by S. First we present an O(nm+n2 log n) algorithm that tests if...

The aim of this paper is to propose a new solution for the roommate problem with strict references. We introduce the solution of maximum irreversibility and consider almost stable matchings (Abraham et al. [2]) and maximum stable matchings (Tan [30] [32]). We find that almost stable matchings...

Optimal power flow (OPF) problems are focussing on the question how a power transmission network can be operated in the most economic way. The general aim in such scenarios is to optimize generator scheduling in order to meet consumption re-quirements, transmission constraints and to minimize...

Let us consider a financially constrained leveraged financial firm having some divisions which have invested into some risky assets. Using coherent measures of risk the sum of the capital requirements of the divisions is larger than the capital requirement of the firm itself, there is some...

Voting power in voting situations is measured by the probability of changing decisions by altering the cast 'yes' or 'no' votes. Recently this analysis has been extended by strategic abstention. Abstention, just as 'yes' or 'no' votes can change decisions. This theory is often applied to...

The European Union used to make decisions by unanimity or near unanimity. After a series of extensions, with 27 member states the present decision making mechanisms have become very slow and assigned power to the members in an arbitrary way. The new decision rules accepted as part of the Lisbon...