NON-CONVERGENCE TO STABILITY IN COALITION FORMATION GAMES.

BONIFACIO, AGUSTÍN; IÑARRA, ELENA; NEME, PABLO

PROCEEDINGS OF VIII CONGRESO DE MATEMÁTICA APLICADA, COMPUTACIONAL E INDUSTRIAL

ASAMACI

Lugar: La Plata; Año: 2021 vol. 8

2314-3282

We study the problem of convergence to stability in coalition formation games in which the strategies of each agent are coalitions in which she can participate and outcomes are coalition structures. Given a natural blocking dynamic, an absorbing set is a minimum set of coalition structures that once reached is never abandoned. The coexistence of trivial (singleton) and non-trivial absorbing sets is what causes lack of convergence to stability. To characterize games in which both types of set are present, we first relate circularity among coalitions in preferences (rings) with circularity among coalition structures (cycles) and show that there is a ring in preferences if and only if there is a cycle in coalition structures. Then we identify a special configuration of overlapping rings in preferences characterizing games that lack convergence to stability. Finally, we apply our findings to the study of games induced by sharing rules.