Core in a simple coalition formation game

Abstract

We analyze the core of a class of coalition formation game in which every player's payoff depends only on the members of her coalition. We first consider anonymous games and additively separable games. Neither of these strong properties guarantee the existence of a core allocation, even if additional strong properties are imposed. We then introduce two top-coalition properties each of which guarantee the existence. We show that these properties are independent of the Scarf-balancedness condition. Finally we give several economic applications.