Communication situations with asymmetric players

Abstract.

In this paper we study situations where asymmetric players have restricted possibilities for communication. Extreme asymmetry results in a hierarchy among the players. We introduce a class of allocation rules for these situations inspired by the Myerson value (Myerson (1977)) and Shapley values with weight systems (Kalai and Samet (1988)). It is shown that this new class of allocation rules can be characterized by a consistency property, a fairness criterion, a property based on the hierarchy among the players, and an efficiency criterion. Furthermore, we show that the consistency property can be dropped from the axiomatic characterization when the fairness criterion is strengthened.