Abstract:
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A minimum cost spanning tree (mcst) problem analyzes the way to efficiently
connect individuals to a source when they are located at different places.
Once the efficient tree is obtained, the question on how allocating the total
cost among the involved agents defines, in a natural way, a confliicting claims
situation. For instance, we may consider the endowment as the total cost of
the network, whereas for each individual her claim is the maximum amount
she will be allocated, that is, her connection cost to the source. Obviously,
we have a confliicting claims problem, so we can apply claims rules in order to
obtain an allocation of the total cost. Nevertheless, the allocation obtained by
using claims rules might not satisfy some appealing properties (in particular,
it does not belong to the core of the associated cooperative game). We will
define other natural claims problems that appear if we analyze the maximum
and minimum amount that an individual should pay in order to support the
minimum cost tree.
Keywords: Minimum cost spanning tree problem, Claims problem, Core
JEL classification: C71, D63, D71. |