Publications by PSE researchers

A balanced transferable utility game (N, v) has a stable core if its core is externally stable, that is, if each imputation that is not in the core is dominated by some core element. Given two payoff allocations x and y, we say that x outvotes y via some coalition S of a feasible set if x dominates y via S and x allocates at least v(T) to any feasible T that is not contained in S. It turns out that outvoting is transitive and the set M of maximal elements with respect to outvoting coincides with the core if and only if the game has a stable core. By applying the duality theorem of linear programming twice, it is shown that M coincides with the core if and only if a certain nested balancedness condition holds. Thus, it can be checked in finitely many steps whether a balanced game has a stable core. We say that the game has a super-stable core if each payoff vector that allocates less than v(S) to some coalition S is dominated by some core element and prove that core super-stability is equivalent to vital extendability, requiring that each vital coalition is extendable.

We propose a model of the joint evolution of opinions and social relationships in a setting where social influence decays over time. The dynamics are based on bounded confidence: social connections between individuals with distant opinions are severed while new connections are formed between individuals with similar opinions. Our model naturally gives raise to strong diversity, i.e., the persistence of heterogeneous opinions in connected societies, a phenomenon that most existing models fail to capture. The intensity of social interactions is the key parameter that governs the dynamics. First, it determines the asymptotic distribution of opinions. In particular, increasing the intensity of social interactions brings society closer to consensus. Second, it determines the risk of polarization, which is shown to increase with the intensity of social interactions. Our results allow to frame the problem of the design of public debates in a formal setting. We hence characterize the optimal strategy for a social planner who controls the intensity of the public debate and thus faces a trade-off between the pursuit of social consensus and the risk of polarization. We also consider applications to political campaigning and show that both minority and majority candidates can have incentives to lead society towards polarization.

This paper studies decision-making in the face of two stochastically independent sources of uncertainty. It characterizes axiomatically a Subjective Expected Utility representation of preferences where subjective beliefs consist of a product probability measure. The two key axioms in this characterization both involve some behavioral notions of stochastic independence. Our result can be understood as a purely subjective version of the Anscombe and Aumann (1963) theorem that avoids the controversial use of exogenous probabilities by appealing to stochastic independence. We also obtain an extension to Choquet Expected Utility representations.

Generalized Additive Independence (GAI) models permit to represent interacting variables in decision making. A fundamental problem is that the expression of a GAI model is not unique as it has several equivalent different decompositions involving multivariate terms. Considering for simplicity 2-additive GAI models (i.e., with multivariate terms of at most 2 variables), the paper examines the different questions (definition, monotonicity, interpretation, etc.) around the decomposition of a 2-additive GAI model and proposes as a basis the notion of well-formed decomposition. We show that the presence of a bi-variate term in a well-formed decomposition implies that the variables are dependent in a preferential sense. Restricting to the case of discrete variables, and based on a previous result showing the existence of a monotone decomposition, we give a practical procedure to obtain a monotone and well-formed decomposition and give an explicit expression of it in a particular case.

We study an asymmetric version of the threshold model of binary decision making with anticonformity under asynchronous update mode that mimics continuous time. We analyze this model on a complete graph using three different approaches: the mean-field approximation, Monte Carlo simulation, and the Markov chain approach. The latter approach yields analytical results for arbitrarily small systems, in contrast to the mean-field approach, which is strictly correct only for an infinite system. We show that for sufficiently large systems, all three approaches produce the same results, as expected. We consider two cases: (1) homogeneous, in which all agents have the same tolerance threshold, and (2) heterogeneous, in which thresholds are given by a beta distribution parameterized by two positive shape parameters α and β. The heterogeneous case can be treated as a generalized model that reduces to a homogeneous model in special cases. We show that particularly interesting behaviors, including social hysteresis and critical mass reported in innovation diffusion, arise only for values of α and β that yield the shape of the distribution observed in reality.

We investigate the phenomenon of diffusion in a countably infinite society of individuals interacting with their neighbors in a network. At a given time, each individual is either active or inactive. The diffusion is driven by two characteristics: the network structure and the diffusion mechanism represented by an aggregation function. We distinguish between two diffusion mechanisms (probabilistic, deterministic) and focus on two types of aggregation functions (strict, Boolean). Under strict aggregation functions, polarization of the society cannot happen, and its state evolves towards a mixture of infinitely many active and infinitely many inactive agents, or towards a homogeneous society. Under Boolean aggregation functions, the diffusion process becomes deterministic and the contagion model of Morris (2000) becomes a particular case of our framework. Polarization can then happen. Our dynamics also allows for cycles in both cases. The network structure is not relevant for these questions, but is important for establishing irreducibility, at the price of a richness assumption: the network should contain at least one complex star and have enough space for storing local configurations. Our model can be given a game-theoretic interpretation via a local coordination game, where each player would apply a best-response strategy in a random neighborhood.

The Choquet integral w.r.t. a capacity is a versatile tool commonly used in decision making. Its practical identification requires, however, to solve an optimization problem with exponentially many variables and constraints. The introduction of k-additive capacities, through the use of the Möbius transform, permits to reduce the number of variables to a polynomial size, but leaves the number of constraints exponential. When k = 2, the use of vertices of the set of 2-additive capacities permits to solve the problem as the number of vertices is polynomial. When k > 2, this solution is no more applicable as the set of vertices of k-additive capacities is not known. We propose in this paper to use instead the set of vertices which are 0-1 valued. We show that the number of such vertices is polynomial, and we observe that the loss of generality is very small for n = 4, k = 3, and conjecture that this still holds for larger values of n. Also, we study the geometric properties of the convex hull of 0-1 valued k-additive capacities.

Models in Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can be analyzed by means of an importance index and an interaction index for every group of criteria. We consider first discrete models in MCDA, without further restriction, which amounts to considering multichoice games, that is, cooperative games with several levels of participation. We propose and axiomatize two interaction indices for multichoice games: the signed interaction index and the absolute interaction index. In a second part, we consider the continuous case, supposing that the continuous model is obtained from a discrete one by means of the Choquet integral. We show that, as in the case of classical games, the interaction index defined for continuous aggre-gation functions coincides with the (signed) interaction index, up to a normalizing coefficient.

The paper presents a survey on selected models of opinion dynamics. Both discrete (more precisely, binary) opinion models as well as continuous opinion models are discussed. We focus on frameworks that assume non-Bayesian updating of opinions. In the survey, a special attention is paid to modeling nonconformity (in particular, anticonformity) behavior. For the case of opinions represented by a binary variable, we recall the threshold model, the voter and q-voter models, the majority rule model, and the aggregation framework. For the case of continuous opinions, we present the DeGroot model and some of its variations, time-varying models, and bounded confidence models.

In several multicriteria decision making problems, it is important to consider interactions among criteria in order to satisfy the preference relations provided by the decision maker. This can be achieved by using aggregation functions based on fuzzy measures, such as the Choquet integral and the multilinear model. Although the Choquet integral has been studied in a large number of works, one does not find the same literature with respect to the multilinear model. In this context, the contribution of this work is twofold. We first provide a formulation of the multilinear model by means of a 2-additive capacity. A second contribution lies in the problem of capacity identification. We consider a supervised approach and apply optimization models with and without regularization terms. Results obtained in numerical experiments with both synthetic and real data attest the performance of the considered approaches.

We study the problem of an upper approximation of a TU-game by a-additive game under the constraint that both games yield the same Shapley value. The best approximation is obtained by minimizing the sum of excesses with respect to the original game, which yields an LP problem. We show that for any game with at most 4 players all vertices of the polyhedron of feasible solutions are optimal, and we give an explicit formula of the value of the LP problem for a particular class of games.

In this article we study supermodular functions on finite distributive lattices. Relaxing the assumption that the domain is a powerset of a finite set, we focus on geometrical properties of the polyhedral cone of such functions. Specifically, we generalize the criterion for extremality and study the face lattice of the supermodular cone. An explicit description of facets by the corresponding tight linear inequalities is provided.