Abstract
If the excesses of the coalitions in a transferable utility game are weighted, then we show that the arising weighted modifications of the well-known (pre)nucleolus and (pre)kernel satisfy the equal treatment property if and only if the weight system is symmetric in the sense that the weight of a subcoalition of a grand coalition may only depend on the grand coalition and the size of the subcoalition. Hence, the symmetrically weighted versions of the (pre)nucleolus and the (pre)kernel are symmetric, i.e., invariant under symmetries of a game. They may, however, violate anonymity, i.e., they may depend on the names of the players. E.g., a symmetrically weighted nucleolus may assign the classical nucleolus to one game and the per capita nucleolus to another game.
We generalize Sobolev’s axiomatization of the prenucleolus and its modification for the nucleolus as well as Peleg’s axiomatization of the prekernel to the symmetrically weighted versions. Only the reduced games have to be replaced by suitably modified reduced games whose definitions may depend on the weight system. Moreover, it is shown that a solution may only satisfy the mentioned sets of modified axioms if the weight system is symmetric.
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Notes
An axiomatization is a characterization by axioms that are logically independent of each other. The logical independence, in particular of the anonymity axiom, was proved by Sudhölter (1993).
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The three authors thank Javier Arin for valuable discussions. The third author was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under project ECO2012-33618, co-funded by the ERDF, and by The Danish Council for Independent Research|Social Sciences under the FINQ project.