Club networks with multiple memberships and noncooperative stability

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Page, Frank H., Jr.; Wooders, Myrna
• 署名单位: Vanderbilt University; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2009.07.006
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 12-20
• 关键词: clubs; Network formation games; potential games; Path dominance core; Nash club equilibria; Admissible set

摘要

Modeling club structures as bipartite directed networks, we formulate the problem of club formation with multiple memberships as a noncooperative game of network formation and identify conditions on network formation rules and players network payoffs sufficient to guarantee that the game has a potential function. Our sufficient conditions require that each player choose freely and unilaterally those clubs he joins and also his activities within those clubs (subject to feasibility constraints). We refer to our conditions on rules as noncooperative free mobility. We also require that players' payoffs be additively separable in player-specific payoffs and externalities and that payoff externalities - a function of club membership, club activities, and crowding be identical across players (externality homogeneity). We then show that under these conditions, the noncooperative game of club network formation with multiple memberships is a potential game over directed club networks and we discuss the implications of this result. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.