Algorithmic Cost Allocation Games: Theory and Applications

Abstract

This article gives an overview on some of the results of the author's PhD thesis [7]. This thesis deals with the cost allocation problem, which arises when several participants share the costs of building or using a common infrastructure. We attempt to answer the question: What is a fair cost allocation among participants? By combining cooperative game theory and state-of-the-art algorithms from linear and integer programming, our work not only defines fair cost allocations but also calculates them numerically for large real-world applications.