We present a new model for cost sharing in minimum cost spanning tree problems, so that the planner can identify the agents that merge. Under this new framework, and as opposed to the traditional model, there exist rules that satisfy merge-proofness. Besides, by strengthening this property and...

The successful formation and long-term stability of a cooperative venture is often linked to the perceived fairness of the associated cost or resource allocation. In particular, the effectiveness of such collaborations can be hampered by the lack of a consensus view on what basis should be used...

Water is essential for life. However, the basic problem of water resource allocation has been that water tends to be over-allocated. Demand for water exceeds the available supply. Essentially, the water economy is bankrupt. Bankruptcy problems have been almost exhaustively studied in the...

In U.S. presidential elections, voters in noncompetitive states seem not to count—and so have zero voting power, according to the Banzhaf and other voting-power indices—because they cannot influence the outcome in their states. But because the electoral votes of these states are essential to...

Based on results given in the recent book by Meinhardt (2013), which presents a dual characterization of the pre-kernel by a finite union of solution sets of a family of quadratic and convex objective functions, we could derive some results related to the uniqueness of the pre-kernel. Rather...

An allocation of indivisible items among n ≥ 2 players is proportional if and only if each player receives a proportional subset—one that it thinks is worth at least 1/n of the total value of all the items. We show that a proportional allocation exists if and only if there is an allocation...

We introduce the sequential equal surplus division for sharing the total welfare resulting form the cooperation of agents along a river with a delta. This allocation rule can be seen as a generalization of the contribution vectors introduced by Ju, Borm and Ruys (2007) in the context of...

In a river claims problem, agents are ordered linearly, and they have both an initial water endowment as well as a claim to the total water resource. We provide characterizations of two solutions to this problem, using Composition properties which have particularly relevant interpretations for...

The paper studies the ordinal equivalence of Linear, Efficient and Symmetry (LES) values in TU-games. It demonstrates that most of the results obtained by Carreras F, Freixas J (2008) in the case of semivalues and simple games are transposable on LES values and the whole TU-games set. In...

To determine correctly a non-convex pre-kernel for TU games with more than 4 players can be a challenge full of possible pitfalls, even to the experienced researcher. Parts of the pre-kernel can be easily overlooked. In this note we discuss a method to present the full shape of the pre-kernel...