Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

-Person Game And Endogenous Coalition Formation, Lin Zhou

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

The two most fundamental questions in cooperative game theory are: When a game is played, what coalitions will be formed and what payoff vectors will be chosen? No previous solution concepts or theories in the literature provide satisfactory answers to both questions; answers are especially lacking for the first one. In this paper we introduce the refined bargaining set, which is the first solution concept in cooperative game theory that simultaneously provides answers to both of the fundamental questions.