A consensus based value for Maintenance

problems

October 1, 2009

Abstract
Keywords:

1 Preliminaries
We start introducing the notation we will use in what follows.
Denition 1.1. A maintenance problem, is a triple (G; c; N ) where G = (N 0 ; E )
is a tree with vertex set N 0 = N [ f0g and edge set E such that the root 0 has
only one adjacent edge, c : E ! R+ is a cost function, and N = f1; : : : ; ng is
the set of players. Let (G; c; N ) be a maintenance problem. For each i 2 N , we
denote by Ei  E the path connecting i with the root, and by ei the edge of
this path incident on i. Given S  N , ES = [i2S Ei .
In this setting, the set of predecessors of i 2 N , P (i)  N is the set of players
located in the path Pi (including i) and the set of followers of i, F (i)  N is
the set of players such that ei is in their path to the root. Formally,
 P (i) = fj 2 N jej 2 Ei g:
 F (i) = fj 2 N jei 2 Ej g:
Associated to each maintenance problem we can dene a cooperative costs
game (N; c ) as follows, X
c (S ) = c(e):
e2ES
Remark 1.2. Every maintenance game is concave, which implies that the core is
non empty. The Shapley value of the game (N; c ) associated to a maintenance
problem = (G; c; N ) is given by the following expression,
X 1
(N; c ) =
j 2P (i)
jF (i)j c(ej ):

1
 In Boonen (2008) the consensus value was studied for particular classes of TU
games, among them the airport games where considered. The airport games are
particular instances of maintenance games in which the tree is just a line graph.
As the next example shows the consensus value does not seem very reasonable
in this situations since a player may not need to pay for the maintenance of his
path, it can happen that he is actually being rewarded by his better position on
the network.
Example 1. Let = (G; c; N ) be a maintenance problem where N = f1; 2; 3; 4g,
G = (N 0 ; E ), E = f(0 : 1); (1 : 2); (1 : 3); (3 : 4)g, and for all (i : j ) 2 E ,
c(i : j ) = kj 2 R+ .
The consensus value of the associated game, (N; c ), is given by the following
expression,
1 1 1 1 1 5 1 5
(N; c ) = ( k1 k ; k +k k ; k + k ; k + k + k ):
4 8 3 4 1 2 8 3 4 1 8 3 4 1 8 3 4
As argued before, players 1 and 2 could receive money instead of paying it
if the cost k3 is high enough.
We can use the consensus idea to build an alternative solution, which satises
the property that every player will actually pay a positive amount. The idea of
this alternative consensus based solution may be explained as follows.
Let  2 (N ), as in the consensus value , suppose that player  (1) 2 N
is leaving the remaining coalition N n f (1)g. Player  (1) will pay the half of
the cost of the edges which will be used by players in the remaining coalition
and the total cost of those edges which will not be used by any member of
the remaining coalition, i.e. half of the cost of the edges in E(1) \ EN nf(1)g ,
and the whole cost of the edges in E(1) n EN nf(1)g (if any). At this point,
as the costs of the edges in E(1) \ EN nf(1)g are half paid by player  (1),
we update the remaining costs of those edges. Next, player  (2) is leaving
the remaining coalition N n f (1);  (2)g, as before, he will pay the half of the
remaining costs of the edges in E(2) \ EN nf(1);(2)g and the whole cost of the
edges in E(2) n EN nf(1);(2)g (if any). The procedure continues until player
 (n) has left the remaining coalition ;.
The consensus based value is the average of the contributions over all possible
permutations  2 (N ).
In order to give a formal denition, we need to dene the remaining costs
recursively and the contributions ti . Let (G; c; N ) be a maintenance problem
and  2 (N ). For each k 2 N , the remaining cost rk : E ! R+ such that
 r1 (e) = c(e)
8
< rk 1 (e) if e 2 E n E(k)
 rk (e) = : 21 rk 1 (e) if e 2 E(k) \ EN nf(1);:::;(k 1)g for k 2 N n f1g.
0 else

2
 and t (G; c; N ) 2 Rn+ , such that
1 X X
t(k) (G; c; N ) = rk (e)+ rk (e):
2 e2E
(k) \EN nf(1);:::;(k 1) g e2E (k)nEN nf(1);:::;(k 1) g
(1)
Denition 1.3. The consensus based value of a maintenance problem =
(G; c; N ), is a vector where its coordinates are dened as follows,
1 X 
i( )= t ( ):
n! 2(N ) i

Proposition 1.4. Let = (G; c; N ) be a maintenance problem. Then ( )=

(N; c ).
Proof. Let = (G; c; N ). First of all, from (1) we know that for any
 2 (N ), ti only depends on the costs of edges of Ei . If we now focus on
how the cost of each ei 2 E is paid among the players, the previous statement
implies that c(ei ) is shared among players on F (i).
Finally we claim that each player of F (i) is actually paying the same amount
of c(ei ). Let  2 (N ) and  (j ) 2 F (i), we dene the contribution of player
 (j ) to the cost c(ei ) with respect to  , t(j ) (G; c; N )(ei ), as

rj (ei ) if F (i)  f (1); : : : ;  (j )g
t(j ) (G; c; N )(ei ) = 1 r (e )
2 j i else

Suppose that F (i) * f (1); : : : ;  (j )g, if jF (i) \ f (1); : : : ;  (j )gj = m, then

c(ei )
t(j ) (G; c; N )(ei ) = : (2)
2m
If F (i)  f (1); : : : ;  (j )g, then
c(e )
t(j ) (G; c; N )(ei ) = jF (i)ij 1 : (3)
2
Now let k 2 F (i) such that k 6=  (j ). It is clear that there exist  2
(N ) n fg, such that, F (i) \ f(1); : : : ; (j )g = F (i) \ f (1); : : : ;  (k) = kg,
which means that,
t(j ) (G; c; N )(ei ) = t (k) (G; c; N )(ei );
and the Proposition is proved.