Skip to main content
Log in

Effectivity functions and efficient coalitions in Boolean games

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Boolean games are a logical setting for representing strategic games in a succinct way, taking advantage of the expressive power and conciseness of propositional logic. A Boolean game consists of a set of players, each of which controls a set of propositional variables and has a specific goal expressed by a propositional formula. We show here that Boolean games are a very simple setting, yet sophisticated enough, for analysing the formation of coalitions. Due to the fact that players have dichotomous preferences, the following notion emerges naturally: a coalition in a Boolean game is efficient if it has the power to guarantee that all goals of the members of the coalition are satisfied. We study the properties of efficient coalitions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abdou J., Keiding H. (1991) Effectivity functions in social choice. Kluwer, Amsterdam

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Abraham, D., Blum, A., & Sandholm, T. (2007). Clearing algorithms for barter exchange markets: Enabling nationwide kidney exchange. In Proceedings of conference on electronic commerce (EC’07).

  • Agotnes, T., & Alechina, N. (2011). Reasoning about joint action and coalitioal ability in K n with intersection. In Proceedings of CLIMA XII, Vol. 6814 of LNAI (pp. 139–156). New York: Springer.

  • Aumann R. J. (1959) Acceptable points in general n-person games. In: Tucker A., Luce R. (eds) Contributions to the theory of games, vol IV. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Aumann R. J. (1967) A survey of cooperative games without side payments. In: Shubik M. (ed.) Essays in mathematical economics in honour of Oskar Morgenstern. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Boella, G., Sauro, L., & van der Torre, L. (2005). Admissible agreements among goal-directed agents. In Proceedings of the international conference on intelligent agent technology (IAT’05) (pp. 543–554). IEEE.

  • Boella, G., Sauro, L., & van der Torre, L. (2006). Strengthening admissible coalitions. In 17th European conference on artificial intelligence (ECAI’06).

  • Bonzon, E., Lagasquie-Schiex, M.-C., & Lang J. (2006). Compact preference representation for Boolean games. In Proceedings of the 9th Pacific rim international conference on artificial intelligence (PRICAI’06) (Vol. 4099, pp. 41–50). New York: Springer.

  • Bonzon E., Lagasquie-Schiex M.-C., Lang J., Zanuttini B. (2009) Compact preference representation and Boolean games. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 18(1): 1–35

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunne, P. E., & van der Hoek, W. (2004). Representation and Complexity in Boolean Games. In Proceedings of the 9th European conference on logics in artificial intelligence (JELIA’04). LNCS (Vol. 3229, pp. 347–359). New York: Springer.

  • Dunne, P. E., van der Hoek, W., Kraus, S., & Wooldridge, M. (2008). Cooperative Boolean games. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on autononous agents and multiagent systems (AAMAS’08). pp. 1015–1023.

  • Endriss, U., Kraus, S., Lang, J., & Wooldridge, M. (2011). Designing incentives for Boolean games. In Proceedings of the tenth international conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (AAMAS-2011).

  • Goranko, V., Jamroga, W., & Turrini, P. (2011). Strategic games and truly playable effectivity functions. In Proceedings of AAMAS-11 (pp. 727–734).

  • Harrenstein, P. (2004). Logic in conflict. Ph.D. thesis, Utrecht University.

  • Harrenstein, P., van der Hoek, W., Meyer, J.-J., & Witteveen C. (2001). Boolean games. In J. van Benthem (Ed.), Proceedings of the 8th international conference on theoretical aspects of rationality and knowledge (TARK’01), theoretical aspects of rationality and knowledge (pp. 287–298). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

  • Lang J., Liberatore P., Marquis P. (2003) Propositional independence—formula-variable independence and forgetting. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 18: 391–443

    Google Scholar 

  • Moulin H. (1983) The strategy of social choice. North-Holland, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Myerson R. B. (1991) Game theory: Analysis of conflict. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Owen G. (1982) Game theory. Academic Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauly, M. (2001). Logic for social software. Ph.D. thesis, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Universiteit van Amserdam, Amsterdam.

  • Sauro, L. (2006). Formalizing admissibility criteria in coalition formation among goal directed agents. Ph.D. thesis, Universita’ Degli Studi di Torino Dipartimento di Informatica.

  • Sauro, L., van der Torre, L., & Villata, S. (2009). Dependency in cooperative Boolean games. In KES-AMSTA (pp. 1–10). New York: Springer.

  • Sauro, L., & Villata, S. (2011). Dependency in cooperative Boolean games. Journal of Logic and Computation. To appear.

  • Wooldridge M., Dunne P. E. (2004) On the computational complexity of qualitative coalitional games. Artificial Intelligence 158/1: 27–73

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elise Bonzon.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bonzon, E., Lagasquie-Schiex, MC. & Lang, J. Effectivity functions and efficient coalitions in Boolean games. Synthese 187 (Suppl 1), 73–103 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0130-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-012-0130-y

Keywords

Navigation