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Main Authors: Besson-Niebles, Nicolas, Bouveret, Sylvain, Brauner, Nadia, Brulard, Nicolas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01470
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author Besson-Niebles, Nicolas
Bouveret, Sylvain
Brauner, Nadia
Brulard, Nicolas
author_facet Besson-Niebles, Nicolas
Bouveret, Sylvain
Brauner, Nadia
Brulard, Nicolas
contents The core of Transferable Utility (T.U.) games is a well-known solution concept from cooperative game theory yielding a cost allocation among n agents (called players) forming a coalition that is stable (i.e. no subset of players has an interest to deviate). In this paper, inspired by a practical application in the context of a decision support system for collaborative transportation in a Short Food Supply Chain (SFSC), we mainly focus on Traveling Salesman Games (TSGs), where the objective is to allocate the cost of a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) with n locations and 1 depot to n players, each linked to exactly one of the locations. Given the computational complexity of computing an element of the core and the cost of a TSP, we study semicore allocations: a relaxation of the core that only requires that the subsets of size n -1 and of size 1 do not wish to deviate from the coalition. In the literature, instances of TSGs with empty cores and semicores are found. Hence, this paper first surveys the methods to approximate stability whenever the core is empty, such as the cost of stability (computing the minimum amount of money to subsidize the coalition with to attain stability) and the $ε$-core (which is a set of allocations that allow subsets of players to exceed their actual cost, but at most of a value of $ε$). We prove that these two solution
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_01470
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Approximate Stability of Subadditive Games and Traveling Salesman Games
Besson-Niebles, Nicolas
Bouveret, Sylvain
Brauner, Nadia
Brulard, Nicolas
Optimization and Control
The core of Transferable Utility (T.U.) games is a well-known solution concept from cooperative game theory yielding a cost allocation among n agents (called players) forming a coalition that is stable (i.e. no subset of players has an interest to deviate). In this paper, inspired by a practical application in the context of a decision support system for collaborative transportation in a Short Food Supply Chain (SFSC), we mainly focus on Traveling Salesman Games (TSGs), where the objective is to allocate the cost of a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) with n locations and 1 depot to n players, each linked to exactly one of the locations. Given the computational complexity of computing an element of the core and the cost of a TSP, we study semicore allocations: a relaxation of the core that only requires that the subsets of size n -1 and of size 1 do not wish to deviate from the coalition. In the literature, instances of TSGs with empty cores and semicores are found. Hence, this paper first surveys the methods to approximate stability whenever the core is empty, such as the cost of stability (computing the minimum amount of money to subsidize the coalition with to attain stability) and the $ε$-core (which is a set of allocations that allow subsets of players to exceed their actual cost, but at most of a value of $ε$). We prove that these two solution
title Approximate Stability of Subadditive Games and Traveling Salesman Games
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01470