Minimal balanced collections and their applications to core stability and other topics of game theory

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mermoud, Dylan Laplace, Grabisch, Michel, Sudhölter, Peter
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912472096571392
author Mermoud, Dylan Laplace
Grabisch, Michel
Sudhölter, Peter
author_facet Mermoud, Dylan Laplace
Grabisch, Michel
Sudhölter, Peter
contents Minimal balanced collections are a generalization of partitions of a finite set of n elements and have important applications in cooperative game theory and discrete mathematics. However, their number is not known beyond n = 4. In this paper we investigate the problem of generating minimal balanced collections and implement the Peleg algorithm, permitting to generate all minimal balanced collections till n = 7. Secondly, we provide practical algorithms to check many properties of coalitions and games, based on minimal balanced collections, in a way which is faster than linear programming-based methods. In particular, we construct an algorithm to check if the core of a cooperative game is a stable set in the sense of von Neumann and Morgenstern. The algorithm implements a theorem according to which the core is a stable set if and only if a certain nested balancedness condition is valid. The second level of this condition requires generalizing the notion of balanced collection to balanced sets.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_05898
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Minimal balanced collections and their applications to core stability and other topics of game theory
Mermoud, Dylan Laplace
Grabisch, Michel
Sudhölter, Peter
Computer Science and Game Theory
Theoretical Economics
Combinatorics
91A12 (Primary), 05C65 (Secondary)
Minimal balanced collections are a generalization of partitions of a finite set of n elements and have important applications in cooperative game theory and discrete mathematics. However, their number is not known beyond n = 4. In this paper we investigate the problem of generating minimal balanced collections and implement the Peleg algorithm, permitting to generate all minimal balanced collections till n = 7. Secondly, we provide practical algorithms to check many properties of coalitions and games, based on minimal balanced collections, in a way which is faster than linear programming-based methods. In particular, we construct an algorithm to check if the core of a cooperative game is a stable set in the sense of von Neumann and Morgenstern. The algorithm implements a theorem according to which the core is a stable set if and only if a certain nested balancedness condition is valid. The second level of this condition requires generalizing the notion of balanced collection to balanced sets.
title Minimal balanced collections and their applications to core stability and other topics of game theory
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Theoretical Economics
Combinatorics
91A12 (Primary), 05C65 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05898