http://www.mdpi.com/journal/games/special_issues/coalition-form/ Dear Colleagues, Since the earliest days of mankind we have realized that there are gains from cooperating with others. As a consequence our socio-economic environment abounds with group structures like families, clubs, firms, political interest groups, military alliances and all kinds of international organizations and agreements. While the early literature in cooperative game theory has taken the coalition structure as exogenously given and has focused on the question of how the gains from cooperation are distributed among the members of a coalition, the theory of coalition formation deals with the emergence and stability of coalitions among individual decision makers. The problem of coalition formation becomes very complex if coalitions impose externalities on each other and if multiple memberships are allowed. For the Special Issue in Games I invite original contributions on coalition formation (including matching problems) from cooperative and non-cooperative game theory as well as from experimental economics. General and applied contributions, e.g. dealing with international environmental agreements, are equally welcome. Prof. Dr. Anke Gerber Guest Editor Submission Information All manuscripts should be submitted to games@mdpi.com with a copy to the Guest Editor. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website. Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Games is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI. Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first couple of issues, to be published in 2010, the Article Processing Charges (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/3/338/ We study the solution concepts of partial cooperative Cournot-Nash equilibria and partial cooperative Stackelberg equilibria. The partial cooperative Cournot-Nash equilibrium is axiomatically characterized by using notions of rationality, consistency and converse consistency with regard to reduced games. We also establish sufficient conditions for which partial cooperative Cournot-Nash equilibria and partial cooperative Stackelberg equilibria exist in supermodular games. Finally, we provide an application to strategic network formation where such solution concepts may be useful. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/3/338/ Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST Games 2010-09-21 1 3 Article 338 356 2073-4336 Partial Cooperative Equilibria: Existence and Characterization 2010-09-21 doi: 10.3390/g1030338 Sylvain Béal Subhadip Chakrabarti Amandine Ghintran Philippe Solal http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/3/299/ This article surveys studies on universally balanced properties of cooperative games defined in a succinct form. In particular, we focus on combinatorial optimization games in which the values to coalitions are defined through linear optimization programs, possibly combinatorial, that is subject to integer constraints. In economic settings, the integer requirement reflects some forms of indivisibility. We are interested in the classes of games that guarantee a non-empty core no matter what are the admissible values assigned to the parameters defining these programs. We call such classes universally balanced. We present characterization and complexity results on the universally balancedness property for some classes of interesting combinatorial optimization games. In particular, we focus on the algorithmic properties for identifying universally balancedness for the games under discussion. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/3/299/ Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST Games 2010-09-13 1 3 Article 299 316 2073-4336 Universally Balanced Combinatorial Optimization Games 2010-09-13 doi: 10.3390/g1030299 Gabrielle Demange Xiaotie Deng http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/3/286/ A set of coalition structures P is farsightedly stable (i) if all possible deviations from any coalition structure p belonging to P to a coalition structure outside P are deterred by the threat of ending worse off or equally well off, (ii) if there exists a farsighted improvingpath from any coalition structure outside the set leading to some coalition structure in the set, and (iii) if there is no proper subset of P satisfying the first two conditions. A non-empty farsightedly stable set always exists. We provide a characterization of unique farsightedly stable sets of coalition structures and we study the relationship between farsighted stability and other concepts such as the largest consistent set and the von Neumann-Morgenstern farsightedly stable set. Finally, we illustrate our results by means of coalition formation games with positive spillovers. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/3/286/ Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST Games 2010-09-02 1 3 Article 286 298 2073-4336 Coalition Formation among Farsighted Agents 2010-09-02 doi: 10.3390/g1030286 P. Jean-Jacques Herings Ana Mauleon Vincent Vannetelbosch http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/159/ We consider three-sided coalition formation problems when each agent is concerned about his local status as measured by his relative rank position within the group of his own type and about his global status as measured by the weighted sum of the average rankings of the other types of groups. We show that a core stable coalition structure always exists, provided that the corresponding weights are balanced and each agent perceives the two types of status as being substitutable. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/159/ Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST Games 2010-06-25 1 2 Article 159 167 2073-4336 Balanced Weights and Three-Sided Coalition Formation 2010-06-25 doi: 10.3390/g1020159 Lazarova Dimitrov http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/137/ The literature on International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) predicts a rather low number of signatories to an IEA. This is in sharp contrast to empirical evidence. As experimental economics provides some evidence for more complex human behavior, extending the theory of IEAs to a broader class of preferences is clearly promising. The present paper shows that where countries’ preferences incorporate justice and fairness there will be a strong incentive for them to choose similar abatement policies within and outside an IEA. Consequently, free-riding at the expense of the signatory states diminishes and participation in an IEA becomes a more successful strategy, so that the size of stable IEAs increases. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/137/ Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST Games 2010-06-24 1 2 Article 137 158 2073-4336 Can Justice and Fairness Enlarge International Environmental Agreements? 2010-06-24 doi: 10.3390/g1020137 Grüning Peters http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/66/ We study the recursive core introduced in Huang and Sjöström [8]. In general partition function form games, the recursive core coalition structure may be either coarser or finer than the one that maximizes the social surplus. Moreover, the recursive core structure is typically different from the one predicted by the α-core. We fully implement the recursive core for general games, including non-superadditive games where the grand coalition does not form in equilibrium. We do not put any restrictions, such as stationarity, on strategies. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/1/2/66/ Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 CEST Games 2010-04-15 1 2 Article 66 88 2073-4336 The Recursive Core for Non-Superadditive Games 2010-04-15 doi: 10.3390/g1020066 Huang Sjöström