9 June 2011
Coalitional games are part of game theory, a field of Economics. In coalitional games, players form groups, or coalitions, according to their possible preferences. Coalitional games are at their most important when applied to studying the formation of optimal coalitions, different ways of allocating the benefits of a coalition between players, the stability of a coalition structure, and the application of study results when developing trade and negotiation systems.
In her doctoral dissertation, Helena Keinänen, Licentiate of Philosophy, has researched various coalition game methods. Her research has focused on discovering optimal or stable coalition structures among a particularly large number of coalition structures. In coalitional games, effective search methods must be employed in order to identify the desired coalition structures.
The dissertation sheds more light on the properties of coalition structures in certain subclasses of coalitional game. This serves as the basis for the thesis' presentation of new techniques for identifying coalition structures that fulfil a given set of criteria. The findings suggest that such coalition structures can be efficiently identified, through either stochastic local search algorithms, or deterministic algorithms.
***
Helena Keinänen’s thesis Algorithms for coalitional games belongs to the field of Economics.
Read the thesis: http://info.tse.fi/julkaisut/vk/Ae2_2011.pdf
Contact information: mob. + 385 50 368 2577, e-mail helena.keinanen(a)tse.fi