Verifying gross substitutability. (Q1852660)

Let \(E\) be a finite set of employees; \(p_i\) denotes the salary demand of employee \(i \in E\) and \(v(T)\) the profit from the job done by a team \(T \subseteq E\). The paper concerns utility functions of the form \[ u(T,p) = v(T) - \sum_{i \in T} p_i. \] Given a price \(p\), the collection of teams with maximal utility is denoted by \(\mathcal{B}(p)\) and \(c(p)\) denotes the team containing the employees that are a member of at least one element of \(\mathcal{B}(p)\). A utility function \(u\) satisfies the gross substitutability property (\(GS\)-property) if for every price vector \(p\), every employee \(i \in c(p)\) and all price vectors \(q \geq p\) with \(q_i = p_i\), the relation \(i \in c(q)\) is also valid. The authors prove that the \(GS\)-property implies the concavity of a utility function. The necessary and sufficient condition for the \(GS\)-property is presented and the method of testing of this property is suggested.