Cooperative game theory and applications. Cooperative games arising from combinatorial optimization problems (Q4366805)

This book, consisting of seven chapters, aims to deal with applications of cooperative game theory that arise from combinatorial optimization problems. For such problems in which at least two decision makers are involved, classical combinatorial optimization theory does not suffice in order to solve the associated allocation problem how to allocate the total revenue (or savings costs, in terms of costs) among the participants of the jointly undertaken project. It is with this second problem (besides the first one how to execute the project in an optimal way) that cooperative game theory can help in that the existing solution concepts from cooperative game theory can be applied to arrive at allocation methods. The first chapter is introductory and treats general game theoretic notions. The second chapter focuses on linear programming games and extensions (since linear programming is a core topic within combinatorial optimization). The third chapter studies two-sided assignment games (arising from a bipartite matching situation) as well as permutation games (which class of games does include the two-sided assignment games), together with their multidimensional generalizations. The fourth chapter deals with the sequencing games and their extensions (arising from the sequencing situation with customer's linear cost functions). The fifth, sixth and seventh chapter deal with the travelling salesman games (arising from a directed graph with weights on the arcs) and routing games, minimum cost spanning tree games (arising from spanning tree networks within a connected graph), and location games (arising from a connected graph). The book is self-contained. Each chapter starts with an example to illustrate the type of problem considered throughout that chapter. Hence, the book can be read in several ways, at a lower, average, or higher level of mathematics. The presentation of the introductory chapter, except for the very first paragraph, however, is purely mathematical with reference to a large number of basic notions within the field of cooperative game theory.