Core stability of minimum coloring games

Abstract

In cooperative game theory, a characterization of games with stable cores is known as one of the most notorious open problems. We study this problem for a special case of the minimum coloring games, introduced by Deng, Ibaraki & Nagamochi, which arises from a cost allocation problem when the players are involved in conflict. In this paper, we show that the minimum coloring game on a perfect graph has a stable core if and only if every vertex of the graph belongs to a maximum clique. We also consider the problem on the core largeness, the extendability, and the exactness of minimum coloring games. © Springer-Verlag 2004.