One-bound core games

Abstract

This paper introduces the new class of one-bound core games, where the core can be described by either a lower bound or an upper bound on the payoffs of the players, named lower bound core games and upper bound core games, respectively. We study the relation of the class of one-bound core games with several other classes of games and characterize the new class by the structure of the core and in terms of Davis-Maschler reduced games. We also provide explicit expressions and axiomatic characterizations of the nucleolus for one-bound core games, and show that the nucleolus coincides with the Shapley value and the $$\tau$$ τ -value when these games are convex.