Monday, March 12, 2012
Some Understandings about Forming Coalitions
A precondition of forming coalitions is that there is a way to distribute the utility and pay off among the coalition members.
Generally thinking the aim of forming a coalition is to gain more social utility. However, for a self-interested agent, it decided to form or join a coalition if and only if the coalition can maximized its utility. A self-interested agent doesn't care about the amount of social utility.
However, is it that all ways to increase the utilities among a group of agents can be seen as forming coalitions.
For example, there are two agents i and j. i wants a good C and j wants a good D. i has the good D and j has the good C. Both agents can maximize their utilities by changing the goods they own. Do i and j form a coalition? I was thinking they do, but now, I think I probably wrong in the way I am thinking it.
The coalition theory is not to concern about how agents cooperate, but it care about the largest value that the coalition can obtain.
In other words, the concepts of coalition and cooperate are at different levels.
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eh....I drunk all the orange juice....
ReplyDeleteYou mean the i, j C,D case is cooperation not coalition,right?
ReplyDeleteActually, I asked my supervisor after I post this. He said i or j can form a coalition with itself, so it could be two coalitions {i} and {j}.
DeleteI don't understand what is the difference between cooperation and colition. What's more in a colition than cooperation?
ReplyDeleteFor the agents in a coalition, there should be a way to distribute the resource, payoff and utility. The agents in the coalition may all be self-interested. They will not choose to help each other.
DeleteCooperation is an action. I think (but not quite sure) that it is unnecessary to have a function to distribute resource, payoff and utility. Agents can cooperate without share all these stuffs.