Neither in- nor outside: the UK in the European Union

What is it that is neither inside nor outside, but still it is in the house? The EU membership of the United Kingdom reminds me a lot of this Hungarian riddle (solution later): when the UK was out, it tried to get in, but since the UK is in, it tries to get out. It is especially strange to look at this from the East where countries are begging to be let in the EU - while the UK wants to walk out on the other end. Analysis through the glasses of cooperative game theory.

Paper: Fair apportionment in the view of the Venice Commission’s recommendation

In most, though not all elections one can vote for candidates in electoral districts. Designing the districts is obviously a sensitive issue. How to do it well? Mathematical Social Sciences has just published our paper (joint with Péter Biró and Balázs Sziklai) on the Leximin apportionment method. The paper is free to download until 19 August 2015. 

Mini Conference of the Game Theory research group at MTA-KRTK

We have a Mini Conference of the Game Theory research group at MTA-KRTK on 21 November. 

9:00-9:30 gathering in room 804 of Institute of Economics
9:30-10:00 Peter Biro
10:00-10:30 David Csercsik
10:30-11:00 Endre Csoka
11:00-11:30 coffee break
11:30-12:00 Hubert Janos Kiss
12:00-12:30 Flip Klijn
12:30-13:00 Balazs Sziklai
13:00- lunch

Venue: Institute of Economics, KRTK, Hungarian Academy of Sciences; Budaörsi 45, H-1112 Budapest.

Time: 21 November 2013, 9:00-14:00

On the number of blocks required to access the core

The following review has been written for Mathematical Reviews on the paper written by +Sylvain Béal, Eric Rémila, and Philippe Solal.

Postdoctoral position in game theory

Call for doctoral or post-doctoral researchers

The Game Theory Research Group,
Centre for Economic and Regional Sciences,
Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
(http://econ.core.hu/english/res/game_desc.html)

supported by the prestigious Momentum Programme of the HAS seeks applicants for one or more doctoral or post-doctoral researchers starting as soon as possible.

Playing with a madman (Baltag at LGS7)

Like all theories, game theory has its own simplifying assumptions. One of these is the rationality of players, that is: a player, like a true homo oeconomicus will maximise its payoff. As a result the outcome of a noncooperative game will be a Nash equilibrium since it consists of best responses to other players' strategies. But then how should we play the game when the opponent is not rational, especially if she has already made irrational choices?

On the accessibility of the core (Review)

This paper by Yang (2010) belongs to a recent wave of literature that study the core of a cooperative game as a dynamic concept. Sengupta and Sengupta (1996) have shown that from any imputation the core can be accessed by a finite number of blocks. Kóczy (2006) provided an alternative blocking sequence and showed that the number of blocks required is bounded. The present paper relies on the proof of Sengupta and Sengupta by using z-dominance and provides an explicit bound on the length of z-dominance paths: the number of active coalitions, that is, coalitions with a payoff higher than the sum of their members' individual payoffs.