Strategic sharing of a costly network

2012

We study minimum cost spanning tree problems for a set of users connected to a source. Prim’s algorithm provides a way of finding the minimum cost tree mm. This has led to several definitions in the literature, regarding how to distribute the cost. These rules propose different cost allocations, which can be understood as compensations and/or payments between players, with respect to the status quo point: each user pays for the connection she uses to be linked to the source. In this paper we analyze the rationale behind a distribution of the minimum cost by defining an a priori transfer structure. Our first result states the existence of a transfer structure such that no user is willing to …