Recent characterizations of generalized convexity in convexity in cooperative game thoery
The notion of convexity for a real-valued function on the power set of the finite set N (the so-called cooperative game with player set N) is defined as in other mathematical fields. The study of convexity plays an important role within the field of cooperative game theory because the application of the solution part of game theory to convex games provides elegant results for the solution concepts involved. Especially, the well known solution concept called core is, for convex games, very well characterized. The current paper focuses on a notion of generalized convexity, called k- convexity, for cooperative n-person games. Due to very recent characterizations of convexity for cooperative games, the goal is to provide similar new characterizations of k-convexity. The main characterization states that for the k-convexity of an n-person game it is both necessary and sufficient that half of all the so-called marginal worth vectors belong to the core of the game. Here it is taken into account whether a marginal worth vector corresponds to an even or odd ordering of k elements of the n-person player set N. Another characterization of k-convexity is presented in terms of a so-called finite min-modular decomposition. That is, some specific cover game of a k-convex game can be decomposed as the minimum of a finite number of modular (or additive) games. Finally it is established that the k-convexity of a game can be characterized in terms of the second order partial derivates of the so-called multilinear extension of the game.
- OSTI ID:
- 35965
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9408161--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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