Minimum cost spanning tree problems with indifferent agents (Q2442831)

A \textit{minimum cost spanning tree} (mcst) \textit{problem} consists of a finite set of customers, a joint supplier, and the collection of all connection costs between each pair of agents. The arising mcst \textit{game} assigns to each coalition of customers the minimum cost of connecting all members of the coalition with the supplier. In an mcst game \textit{with indifferent players} the coalition function assigns to each coalition \(S\) the minimum cost of connecting all non-indifferent players of \(S\) with the help of arbitrary indifferent players of \(S\) to the supplier. The author shows by means of an example that the core of such a game, differing from the traditional case where indifferent players are absent, may be empty. Moreover, this paper extends the characterization of the Shapley value [\textit{A. Kar}, Games Econ. Behav. 38, No. 2, 265--277 (2002; Zbl 1035.91007)] to mcst games with indifferent players by suitably adapting most of the employed axioms and generalizing the equal treatment property: if the cost of the edge between two agents changes, their cost shares are affected in the same manner if they have the same demand and, otherwise, the changes in the cost shares are proportional to each other. Characterizations of weighted Shapley values are obtained, and it is shown that each of the employed axioms is logically independent of the remaining axioms. Finally, three particular weighted Shapley values are characterized with the help of additional axioms like stability, fairness and manipulation-proofness.