Abstract:
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A minimum cost spanning tree problem analyzes the way to efficiently connect agents to a source when they are located at different places. Once the
efficient tree is obtained, the total cost should be allocated among the involved agents in a fair and stable manner. It is well known that there always
exist allocations in the core of the cooperative game associated to the minimum cost spanning tree problem (Bird, 1976; Granot and Huberman, 1981).
Est ́evez-Fern ́andez and Reijnierse (2014) investigate minimum cost spanning
tree problems with revenues and show that the cost-revenue game may have
empty core. They provide a sufficient condition to ensure the non-emptiness
of the r-core for elementary cost problems; that is, minimum cost spanning
tree problems in which every connection cost can take only two values (low or
high cost). We show that this condition is not necessary and obtain a family
of cost-revenue games (simple problems, Subiza et al. (2016)) in which the
non-emptiness of the r-core is ensured.
Keywords: Minimum cost spanning tree problem, Elementary cost
problem, Simple minimum cost spanning tree problem, Cost-revenue game,
Core.
JEL classification: C71, D63, D71 |