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Exploration is often necessary in online learning to maximize long-term rewards, but it comes at the cost of short-term "regret." We study how this cost of exploration is shared across multiple groups. For example, in a clinical trial setting, patients who are assigned a suboptimal treatment effectively incur the cost of exploration. When patients are associated with natural groups on the basis of, say, race or age, it is natural to ask whether the cost of exploration borne by any single group is "fair." So motivated, we introduce the "grouped" bandit model. We leverage the theory of axiomatic bargaining, and the Nash bargaining solution in particular, to formalize what might constitute a fair division of the cost of exploration across groups. On one hand, we show that any regret-optimal policy strikingly results in the least fair outcome: such policies will perversely leverage the most "disadvantaged" groups when they can. More constructively, we derive policies that are optimally fair and simultaneously enjoy a small "price of fairness." We illustrate the relative merits of our algorithmic framework with a case study on contextual bandits for warfarin dosing where we are concerned with the cost of exploration across multiple races and age groups. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, data science. Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation [Grant 1727239]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01985. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raiffa's solution to the bargaining problem, outlined in Luce and Raiffa (1957) , is the point where the negotiation curve - a sequence of points that constitute step-by-step improvements from the status quo in the feasible payoff space - meets (possibly in the limit) the efficient boundary of the feasible region. A bargaining model with interim agreements yields a negotiation curve in equilibrium (in the spirit of Raiffa), and as the bargaining frictions disappear, the Raiffa path of payoffs converges to the Nash solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity is increasingly driven by socio-economic dynamics, climate change, and population growth. Conflicts among water users, including states, complicate sustainable water management, necessitating collaborative solutions. Building on important studies in water resource management, this study integrates the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model with the Nash bargaining solution to develop a fair water allocation system, which we apply to the Lower Bari Doab area of Punjab, Pakistan. This case study area is characterized by high demands for agricultural, domestic, industrial, and environmental water. To ensure fair allocation of water resources, we analyze future water trends, anticipate demands, and address supply-demand gaps under various scenarios. Our findings demonstrate that by utilizing WEAP in conjunction with the Nash bargaining solution, we can effectively achieve a balance between water demand and supply. This approach enables us to compare various water-use strategies and ensures fair distribution among agricultural stakeholders, who often have lower priority compared to the domestic, industrial, and environmental sectors. More importantly, we demonstrate that Nash bargaining solutions can be mutually beneficial and can maximize overall coverage of water demand. This approach ensures that all agents are better off compared to a non-cooperative outcome, promoting fairness and equity by balancing the needs of all parties. This integrated approach provides a robust framework for sustainable water management and is applicable to other regions facing similar challenges.

In today's competitive world, negotiation and bargaining in the supply chain play a key role in determining the success or failure of a business. It is clear that choosing the right negotiation strategy can have a significant impact on improving business conditions and expanding the market for products and services. Therefore, the present study seeks to examine and derive a model that optimizes the performance of negotiators by referring to the "Nash" bargaining theory. Using meta-synthesis method, this research is focused on the systematic review of previous research findings. For this purpose, with the approach of qualitative research and meta-synthesis tool that includes the seven steps of Sandelowski and Barroso through a detailed review of the subject literature of Webofscience, Scopus and Emerald databases in the period until the end of 2023, valuable information has been collected that Finally, it has led to the identification and analysis of effective dynamics in negotiation and bargaining processes. The results show that a 6-dimensional model including "Nash" solution and decision-making, psychology of negotiators, quality of agreements, sustainability of business relationships, innovation and progress and macro effects on the supply chain can improve our understanding of how to develop and promote effective negotiations and bargaining in The field of supply chain will help. Through the presented model, negotiators can increase their ability to recognize and adopt the best possible strategies and achieve the desired results in the competition in the supply chain. This study has led to drawing a 6-dimensional model with 18 components and 90 indicators, which is a step towards experimental and applied research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how capacity collaboration can benefit two competing firms. We consider a two-stage model where capacity decisions are made in the first stage when there are significant uncertainties about market conditions, and then production decisions are made in the second stage after most of these uncertainties are resolved. We vary the degree of collaboration between the two firms in their capacity and production decisions, examining multiple models and comparing the outcomes. We find that a firm can benefit from collaboration even with its competitors. Interestingly, the firms do not have to make production decisions jointly to realize the benefits of collaboration. Additionally, while collaborative capacity investment proves beneficial, collaborating on production with existing capacity can often yield greater benefits. We find that the advantages of collaboration are most pronounced when competition intensifies, demand fluctuates significantly, and investment costs are high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the low-carbon production problem based on an uncertain differential game. In a two-stage low-carbon product supply chain consisting of a single supplier and a single manufacturer, we construct an uncertain differential equation by taking the emission reduction efforts of the supplier and manufacturer as decision variables and product emission reduction as a state variable. Based on the uncertain differential game, we obtain the supply chain's dynamic equilibrium strategy, emission reduction, and revenue trajectory under non-cooperative and cooperative situations. By comparison, cooperation leads to more effort on both sides of the supply chain, more carbon emission reduction, and higher profits than non-cooperative ones. To further illustrate the supply chain game in the cooperative situation, we give different income situations under the two distribution methods of Nash bargaining solution and Shapley value, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future network is envisioned to be a multi-service network which can support more than one distinct communications service type over the same physical infrastructure. As a potential game changer, wireless network virtualization (WNV) allows the coexistence of multiple network slices over a shared physical platform. One key advantage of WNV is to effectively support multiple traffic types in a multi-service network. In this paper, we propose a novel resource allocation scheme for future wireless networks. Our proposed scheme is formulated as a joint control paradigm, which consists of upper and lower control stages. In the upper control stage, the ideas of Kalai and Smorodinsky bargaining solution (KSBS) and Banzhaf value (BV) are combined to allocate the resource to virtual networks. In the lower control stage, each virtual network operator distributes its assigned resource into corresponding mobile devices based on the multi-criteria bargaining solution, which combines the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) and KSBS to optimize the overall performance subject to different service requirements. To effectively share the limited physical resource, each stage control mechanism works together in an interactive manner. The main novelty of our approach is to reach a reciprocal consensus among competitive network agents. Through system simulations, numerical results show the superiority of our proposed control approach. Especially, the proposed scheme increases the system throughput, device payoff, and fairness by about 10%, 10% and 15%, respectively, in comparison with existing state-of-the-art WNV protocols. Finally, we highlight interesting research challenges and point out potential directions to spur further research in this promising research area.

In this paper, to avoid congestion in the wireless channel of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), a joint beaconing rate and beaconing power based on game theory are proposed in this paper. The game is formulated as a non-cooperative game, a Bayesian game, and a cooperative game. Three distributed and iterative algorithms (Best Response Algorithm, Fictitious Play Algorithm, and Cooperative Bargaining Algorithm) are proposed for computing the beaconing power and beaconing rate of each vehicle. Extensive simulations show the convergence of a proposed algorithm to the equilibrium beaconing power and beaconing rate and give some insights on how the game parameters may vary the game outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the two‐dimensional Nash bargaining solution (NBS) by deploying the standard labour market negotiations model of McDonald and Solow. We show that the two‐dimensional bargaining problem can be decomposed into two one‐dimensional problems, such that the two solutions together replicate the solution of the two‐dimensional problem if the NBS is applied. The axiom of "independence of irrelevant alternatives" is shown to be crucial for this type of decomposability. This result has significant implications for actual negotiations because it allows for the decomposition of a multi‐dimensional bargaining problem into one‐dimensional problems – and thus helps to facilitate real‐world negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rubinstein alternating-offers bargaining game is reconsidered, where players show fairness concerns and their fairness references are characterized by the Nash bargaining solution. The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of fairness concerns in the alternating-offer bargaining game. Alternating-offer bargaining with fairness concerns is developed. We construct a subgame perfect equilibrium and show its uniqueness. Then, it is shown that players' payoffs in the subgame perfect equilibrium are positively related to their own fairness concern coefficient and bargaining power and negatively to the opponents' fairness concern coefficient. Moreover, it is shown that the limited equilibrium partition depends on the ratio of discount rates of the two players when the time lapse between two offers goes to zero. Finally, the proposed model is applied to the bilateral monopoly market of professional basketball players, and some properties of equilibrium price are shown. Our result provides the implication that players should carefully weigh their own fairness concerns, bargaining power and fairness concerns of their opponents, and then make proposals, rather than simply follow the suggestion that the proposal at the current stage is higher than that at the past stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational and self-interested players are motivated to free-ride on an efficient agreement in economies with externalities. To provide a non-cooperative foundation of the Coase theorem, we consider a dynamic bargaining game for side-payment contracts. Players voluntarily participate in negotiations. If all players do not, then any contract is renegotiated. When the probability of negotiations stopping is sufficiently small, there exists an efficient Markov perfect equilibrium where all players immediately participate in the grand coalition. The agreement converges to the Nash bargaining solution as the stopping probability goes to zero. We further show that for any probability of stopping, all players form the grand coalition in finitely many rounds in every pure strategy Markov perfect equilibrium unless the game stops on the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the leading literature, the valid enforcement of property rights is a key ingredient for economic development. However, their enforcement can be problematic in international relations, which can be a valid approximation of an anarchic or state of nature environment. In such a context, we do not have a third party that may sanction any illegal behaviour, since the existing international organizations may lack the necessary power to force countries to behave in a specific way. A large variety of papers have attempted to provide a self-enforcing solution to a conflict among players by defining a bargaining range, which may prevent the emergence of a war. Hence, players renounce the fight and leave peacefully, enforcing de facto property rights. In contrast, we propose a model in which contestants decide to solve their dispute by forming a union. The latter can be interpreted in a broad sense, also encompassing the possibility that they form a new political entity. We highlight the welfare implications of that solution and define the non-empty set of parameters, which support such a decision in the long run. Intuitively, from a dual perspective, the model also discloses the circumstances that may lead players to deviate from the union path and split. Therefore, our paper contributes to the literature about the formation and breakdown of countries, although our primary concern is to present a model with an innovative solution to conflicts. Moreover, our work stresses the importance of the enforcement of property rights to guarantee the peaceful development of relations among countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a bi-level energy management framework based on Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and game theory is presented in the context of different ownership of multiple microgrid systems (MMGS) and microgrid aggregators (MAs). The energy interaction between MMGS and MAs can be regarded as a master–slave game, where microgrid aggregators as the leaders set the differentiated tariff for each MG to maximize its benefits, and MMGS as the follower responds to the tariff decision specified by the leader through peer-to-peer (P2P) energy sharing. The P2P energy sharing of MMGS can be regarded as a co-operative game, employing asymmetric Nash bargaining theory to allocate the co-operative surplus. The Conditional Value at Risk model was used to characterize the expected losses by microgrid aggregators due to the uncertainties of renewable energy resources. The Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions, Big-M method, and strong duality theory were employed to transform the bi-level nonlinear model of energy management into a single-level mixed integer linear programming model. The simulation results show that when MGs adopt the P2P energy-sharing operation mode, the total operating cost of MMGS can be reduced by 7.82%. The simulation results show that the proposed co-operative optimization framework can make the multiple microgrid systems obtain extra benefits and improve the risk resistance of microgrid aggregators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a subscription platform that offers services to variety-seeking consumers who incorporate transportation costs in their decision of how many and which vendor services to consume. ClassPass in fitness and MoviePass in entertainment are examples of such platforms. We find that for the platform to be successful, it should enter markets where consumers' added benefit from patronizing more than one vendor is relatively high, thus strengthening the position of the platform in negotiations with the vendors. As well, managers should consider entering markets where competition between the vendors is relatively weak and in particular, where vendors benefit from local monopoly positions because of high transportation costs incurred by consumers. When entering such markets, offering the subscription contract is likely to attract new customers who are not active when the platform does not exist. Moreover, appropriate crafting of the agreement with the vendors in this case allows the parties to fully extract the surplus derived by platform customers. Last, the platform's managers should be cognizant of the need to identify tools that facilitate alleviated price competition with vendors. Negotiating over an appropriate transfer fee per customer to pay the vendor or imposing restrictions on the level of service that their customers can use may be such tools. Offering customers lower-quality services when using the vendor in comparison with the quality they could obtain by buying directly from him may not be a successful tool to alleviate price competition. This paper was accepted by Duncan Simester, marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a model for a two-party bargaining process in which multiple offers are exchanged as the negotiation goes on, under a risk of breakdown. Typical game theoretical analyses of such settings assume the breakdown risk is known and the parties are able to calculate an initial offer that is immediately accepted by the other party, ending the negotiation. Aiming to develop a model that is closer to real-life situations, in which parties do exchange many offers in a bargaining process, we consider the parties are unable to compute the far-reaching consequences of their offers, and are guided by their subjective expectations of the outcome of the negotiation. This introduces a new perspective to the analysis of two-party bargaining processes: the confidence of the bargainers in terms of what they hope to achieve by bargaining with each other. The resulting model can be seen as an extension of the Zeuthen-Hicks bargaining model. We show analytically that under the assumption of concave utilities of both parties, the bargaining process converges to the nonsymmetric Nash bargaining solution, where the asymmetry is caused by differences in expectations. This result provides a new interpretation of the parameters of the nonsymmetric Nash bargaining solution, linking them to behavior in the bargaining process. As an additional contribution, we perform a simulation study to examine the role of confidence and to analyze the outcomes for non-concave utility functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply chain contract negotiation has gained increasing attention in recent years, and the studies involving negotiations in the operations literature almost exclusively apply the concept of the Nash bargaining (NB) solution. The NB solution, however, is derived based on the axiom of independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA), an unrealistic assumption in many contexts. Indeed, our analysis suggests that the NB solution can lead to unreasonable negotiation outcomes in supply chains with horizontal competition. As an alternative, the Kalai-Smorodinsky (KS) solution has been applied in many fields but has not been introduced to the supply chain contexts. The KS solution is derived under the axiom of individual monotonicity in replacement of the IIA axiom. We perform a comprehensive comparison of contract negotiations under the KS and NB solutions in horizontally competing supply chains. Although the KS solution does not possess the flexibility of explicitly specifying the relative bargaining power as the NB solution does, the KS solution can appropriately capture the negotiation power shift induced by the decision ownership, the negotiation sequence, the vertical relationship, the competition intensity, the trade contingency, and the contract type. Our study sheds lights on the appropriate selection of solution concepts in studying negotiations in competing supply chains. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, operations management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We built a time-consistent cooperative solution for the class of dynamic games played over event trees in the context where the tree structure is given, but the players have different beliefs about the transition probabilities between nodes. Our three-step approach is as follows. First, we consider three alternative methods for aggregating the players' beliefs and assume that the players agree to adopt one of them if they decide to cooperate. Second, we determine the Nash bargaining outcomes for the whole duration of the game. Finally, to insure sustainability of cooperation throughout the whole duration of the game, we propose two time-consistent decompositions over nodes of each player's cooperative share, namely a proportion-consistent and a node-consistent allocation schemes. We illustrate our results with a simple Cournot oligopoly with capacity constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using experimental data, we show that the characteristics of the joint production process have a notable impact on the distribution of bargaining agreements. The setting in which the jointly produced surplus is expressed to be proportional to individual inputs leads to significantly more proportional bargaining agreements. This is in contrast to the setting in which the surplus is expressed as an additive constant, where bargaining agreements are more in line with the Nash bargaining solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two alternative strategic foundations have been identified for applications of the Nash bargaining solution in economic modelling. However, neither interpretation is consistent with treating "threat point" or disagreement payoffs as individual outside options, a salient feature of bargaining relationships in most labor market settings. This paper uses a matching and strategic bargaining model to examine the determination of bargaining power weights and threat points in the asymmetric Nash bargaining solution. The key result establishes a strategic foundation for applying this solution to market settings with endogenously determined outside options, and shows that bargaining weights depend on outside market conditions only when the matching prospects of one side of the market or the other are relatively high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a new approach to construct cooperative behavior in dynamic multicriteria games with asymmetric players is presented. To obtain noncooperative and cooperative equilibria the ideas of multi-objective optimization and game theory are combined. To construct a multicriteria Nash equilibrium the bargaining solution is adopted. To design a multicriteria cooperative equilibrium a compromise scheme that guarantees the fulfillment of rationality conditions is applied. The concept of dynamic stability is adopted for dynamic multicriteria games, and the time-consistent payoff distribution procedure is presented. A dynamic bi-criteria bioresource management problem with different discount factors is considered. The strategies and payoffs of players are obtained under cooperative and noncooperative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many studies about negotiation procedures for contract problems in supply chains. Several recent papers have considered a new negotiation procedure for a repurchase contract problem in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. There, usually, are some wholesalers between a manufacturer and a retailer. Therefore, a supply chain including some wholesalers in addition to a manufacturer and a retailer should be considered. In this study, we call the supply chain in which three or more members are arranged in series the tandem supply chain. We, firstly, address a negotiation problem for a contract about wholesale and repurchase prices in the tandem supply chain in which three members, that is, a manufacturer, a wholesaler and a retailer are arranged in series. The whole contract in the tandem supply chain is composed of two contracts dependent mutually, i.e., the contract between the manufacturer and wholesaler and the contract between the wholesaler and retailer. The collaborative bargaining solution in the tandem supply chain consisting of three members is discussed. This paper, finally, formulates the tandem supply chain including several wholesalers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combined effects of climate change and growing water demand due to population growth, industrial and agricultural developments cause an increase in water scarcity and the subsequent environmental crisis in river basins, which results in conflicts over the property rights and allocation agreements. Thus, an integrated, sustainable and efficient water allocation considering changes in water resources due to climate change and change of users' demands is necessary. In this study, the drainage basin of Zarinehrood was chosen to evaluate the function of selective methods. Assessing climate change impact scenarios of the Fifth IPCC reports, e.g., RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5, have been used. For downscaling outputs of GCMs an artificial neural network (ANN) and for bias correction a quantile mapping (QM) method have been used. Using a bargaining game and the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) with two methods, one symmetric and two AHP methods, the water available for users was allocated. Results indicate an overall increase in temperature and precipitation in the basin. In bargaining game solutions, AHP provided better utilities for players than the symmetric method. These results show that with water management programs and use of a cooperative bargaining game, water allocation can be done in an efficient way. HIGHLIGHTS Using ANN for downscaling.; Using QM for bias correction.; Using game theory for allocation.; Using AHP method for calculating negotiation power.; Evaluating all of the methods.;

• I examine how other-regarding preferences aggregate in a free-form bargaining experiment. • I find that bargainers retain equal payoffs when they transfer payoffs to third subjects. • The same subjects vary the transfers to third subjects considerably depending on their bargaining partner. • The formal analysis can link the results to the individual preferences of the bargainers. • Assuming pairwise inequality aversion explains 80% of the variance of the bargaining agreements. Other-regarding preferences are powerful drivers of human behavior, leading individuals to forgo their own economic gains to share with others. However, when subjects with different levels of other-regarding concern bargain about how to distribute payoffs, it is unclear whether joint bargaining decisions reflect their individual preferences. In this free-form bargaining experiment, I examine how other-regarding preferences of two subjects interact and influence negotiated distribution decisions when they allocate payoffs between themselves and a powerless third subject. The data reveals that fairness between the bargainers is more important than fairness towards the third subject; bargainers only allocate payoff shares to third subjects if the other bargainer is willing to allocate the same amount, even if their other-regarding preferences differ strongly from each other when revealed individually. Through the formal analysis, I can link the results to the other-regarding preferences elicited individually and, thereby, provide new insights into the interaction of other-regarding preferences in joint decision-making environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy storage (ES) is acknowledged to play an important role in modern energy technologies due to its potential to reduce operational costs, enhance the resilience, and level energy load for energy systems. Efficient ES management can achieve cost savings, also known as energy arbitrage, by charging at off‐peak prices and discharging at peak prices. This arbitrage can be further boosted by allowing the ES to be shared by multiple users/buildings. However, since energy arbitrage relies on the variation of energy prices, it is hard to achieve this arbitrage if the prices are uncertain. To address this challenge, we present a robust optimization approach to fairly and efficiently operate an ES shared between two users under price uncertainty. This sharing strategy is formulated as a biobjective mixed integer bilinear programming model. To facilitate solution efficiency, we propose a binary formulation for piecewise McCormick relaxations to approximate the bilinear model by a tractable linear model. A computational study demonstrates the effectiveness of our robust sharing strategy for managing ES sharing under price uncertainty. Also, it shows that the proposed binary formulation for piecewise McCormick relaxations reduces the runtime by around 80% compared to the traditional unary formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common feature to electricity markets with derivative contracts is that the traded contracts are almost only futures and that they are traded multiple times the overall electricity demand. To understand why this occurs in practice, we study the efficiency of risk aligning in the competitive energy industry through derivative contract trading. We derive conditions that need to hold for a contract to provide the most efficient risk aligning, among all possible derivative contracts imaginable. We develop a game‐theoretical model that includes multiple competing producers and retailers whose decision‐makers are heterogeneous in their risk preferences that are captured using mean‐variance utilities. We derive closed‐form equilibrium quantities for the exchanged contracts and contract prices. We show using a simplified setup that, under an inelastic spot price, the optimal quantity and the price of the traded futures contract are driven by the proportion of the electricity spot price that retailers pass down to the consumers. In particular, this proportion impacts who are the buyers and the sellers of the contracts, what quantities of contracts are traded, and at what price the contracts are traded. We apply the model to the German electricity market and show that the conditions for guaranteeing a futures contract to be the most efficient risk aligning contract hold approximately. Our result can explain the dominance of futures contract trading in the energy industry and also the counter‐intuitively large quantity of traded futures, which exceeds multiple times the supplied quantity of electricity. Our results can aid decision‐makers in deciding on the types, amounts, and prices of contracts to trade. For market regulators, our results are helpful in providing understanding regarding the contract trading behavior on the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practical applications, there are many task allocation problems involving the participation of self-interested agents, including Witkey, crowdsourcing and electronic markets. In these cases, to improve the efficiency of task allocation, a reasonable distribution of utilities is critical. To the best of our knowledge, few studies have examined the complex task allocation and utility distribution of self-interested agents, and good solutions are lacking. To address this issue, the following works are done in this paper: first, based on a task allocation model for self-interested agents and by studying the Nash bargaining solution and the bargaining characteristics of the agents, an efficiency utility distribution algorithm satisfying individual rationality and budget effectiveness is proposed. Second, based on the best response strategy of the self-interested agent, a complex task allocation algorithm for multiple self-interested agents is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by comparing the system revenues with other utility distribution and task allocation algorithms.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a Fifth Generation (5G) technique that allows many users to simultaneously access the same time–frequency separating channels via successive interference cancellation (SIC) receiver. Cooperative NOMA (CNOMA) is an effective tool to prevent performance degradation of far users by allocating minimal power to users with good channel conditions. In this paper, we proposed a fair power and channel allocation scheme based on the Nash bargaining solution (NBS) game solution in full-duplex, cooperative beamforming (BF) for multicarrier (MC) NOMA. The proposed NBS scheme assigns optimal power and channel allocation according to channel conditions while maintaining a fair rate amongst cooperative users. NBS provides a fair and optimum approach for maximizing the total rate of CNOMA. The signal-to-leakage (SLR) ratio precoding technique is considered as a design performance criterion for beamforming vector towards achieving power domain CNOMA players. Simulation results show that at BER = 10 - 5 , the NBS power allocation (proposed scheme) improved by 2 dB in terms of Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), compared with the non-cooperative scheme, and 3 dB compared with the multiple-input multiple-output NOMA (MIMO-NOMA). Both improvements were as a result of interference reduction and information sharing in the network. In terms of fairness, the proposed NBS scheme shown a high level of fairness at 0.8401, compared to the other similar approaches in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rubinstein alternating-offers bargaining game is reconsidered, where players show fairness concerns and their fairness references are characterized by the Nash bargaining solution. The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of fairness concerns in the alternating-offer bargaining game. Alternating-offer bargaining with fairness concerns is developed. We construct a subgame perfect equilibrium and show its uniqueness. Then, it is shown that players’ payoffs in the subgame perfect equilibrium are positively related to their own fairness concern coefficient and bargaining power and negatively to the opponents’ fairness concern coefficient. Moreover, it is shown that the limited equilibrium partition depends on the ratio of discount rates of the two players when the time lapse between two offers goes to zero. Finally, the proposed model is applied to the bilateral monopoly market of professional basketball players, and some properties of equilibrium price are shown. Our result provides the implication that players should carefully weigh their own fairness concerns, bargaining power and fairness concerns of their opponents, and then make proposals, rather than simply follow the suggestion that the proposal at the current stage is higher than that at the past stages.

In this paper, a bi-level energy management framework based on Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and game theory is presented in the context of different ownership of multiple microgrid systems (MMGS) and microgrid aggregators (MAs). The energy interaction between MMGS and MAs can be regarded as a master–slave game, where microgrid aggregators as the leaders set the differentiated tariff for each MG to maximize its benefits, and MMGS as the follower responds to the tariff decision specified by the leader through peer-to-peer (P2P) energy sharing. The P2P energy sharing of MMGS can be regarded as a co-operative game, employing asymmetric Nash bargaining theory to allocate the co-operative surplus. The Conditional Value at Risk model was used to characterize the expected losses by microgrid aggregators due to the uncertainties of renewable energy resources. The Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions, Big-M method, and strong duality theory were employed to transform the bi-level nonlinear model of energy management into a single-level mixed integer linear programming model. The simulation results show that when MGs adopt the P2P energy-sharing operation mode, the total operating cost of MMGS can be reduced by 7.82%. The simulation results show that the proposed co-operative optimization framework can make the multiple microgrid systems obtain extra benefits and improve the risk resistance of microgrid aggregators.

According to the leading literature, the valid enforcement of property rights is a key ingredient for economic development. However, their enforcement can be problematic in international relations, which can be a valid approximation of an anarchic or state of nature environment. In such a context, we do not have a third party that may sanction any illegal behaviour, since the existing international organizations may lack the necessary power to force countries to behave in a specific way. A large variety of papers have attempted to provide a self-enforcing solution to a conflict among players by defining a bargaining range, which may prevent the emergence of a war. Hence, players renounce the fight and leave peacefully, enforcing de facto property rights. In contrast, we propose a model in which contestants decide to solve their dispute by forming a union. The latter can be interpreted in a broad sense, also encompassing the possibility that they form a new political entity. We highlight the welfare implications of that solution and define the non-empty set of parameters, which support such a decision in the long run. Intuitively, from a dual perspective, the model also discloses the circumstances that may lead players to deviate from the union path and split. Therefore, our paper contributes to the literature about the formation and breakdown of countries, although our primary concern is to present a model with an innovative solution to conflicts. Moreover, our work stresses the importance of the enforcement of property rights to guarantee the peaceful development of relations among countries.

This article proposes a peer-to-peer transactive multiresource trading framework for multiple multienergy microgrids. In this framework, the interconnected microgrids not only fulfil the multienergy demands of with local hybrid biogas-solar-wind renewables, but also proactively trade their available multienergy and communication resources with each other for delivering secured and high quality of services. The multimicrogrid multienergy and communication trading is an intractable optimization problem because of their inherent strong couplings of multiple resources and independent decision-makings. The original problem is thus formulated as a Nash bargaining problem and further decomposed into the subsequent social multiresource allocation subproblem and payoff allocation subproblem. Furthermore, fully-distributed alternating direction method of multipliers approaches with only limited trading information shared are developed to co-optimize the communication and energy flows while taking into account the local resource-autonomy of heterogeneous microgrids. The proposed methodology is implemented and benchmarked on a three-microgrid system over a 24-h scheduling periods. Numerical results show the superiority of the proposed scheme in system operational economy and resource utilization, and also demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed distributed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many studies for management problems in supply chains consisting of manufacturers and retailers. As one of such studies, a negotiation procedure for concluding a contract in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer has been considered based on a cooperative game theoretic approach. However, the more common situation is that a wholesaler is an intermediary between a manufacturer and a retailer. From this viewpoint, the study on the negotiation procedure for concluding a contract in the tandem supply chain that three members of a manufacturer, a wholesaler and a retailer are arranged tandem should be also investigated. On one hand, the negotiation procedure in the supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer has been considered under a situation where a probability density function (p.d.f.) of demand quantity is unknown and only the mean and variance as limited information about demand quantity are forecasted. In this study, we derive a collaborative bargaining solution for a contract in a tandem supply chain through a negotiation procedure based on the cooperative game theoretic approach under a situation where only the mean and variance of demand quantity are given as limited information. For deriving the bargaining solution in the tandem supply chain, the distribution free approach based on Cauchy-Schwarz inequality is adopted to evaluate the lower bounds of the expected profits of the manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer. As a result, a unique collaborative bargaining solution of a contract in the tandem supply chain consisting of three or more members is derived under a situation where the probability density function of demand quantity is unknown and only the mean and variance of demand quantity are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]