A new look at the role of players’ weights in the weighted Shapley value

everal new families of semivalues for weighted n-person transferable utility games are axiomatically constructed and discussed under increasing collections of axioms, where the weighted Shapley value arises as the resulting one member family. A more general approach to such weighted games defined in the form of two components, a weight vector λ and a classical TU-game v, is provided. The proposed axiomatizations are done both in terms of λ and v. Several new axioms related to the weight vector λ are discussed, including the so-called “amalgamating payoffs” axiom, which characterizes the value of a weighted game in terms of another game with a smaller number of players. They allow for a new look at the role of players’ weights in the context of the weighted Shapley value for the model of weighted games, giving new properties of it. Besides, another simple formula for the weighted Shapley value is found and examples illustrating some surprising behavior of it in the context of players’ weights are given. The paper contains a wide discussion of the results obtained.

► Families of semivalues for weighted TU-games are studied. ► A new general axiomatization approach to such semivalues is provided. ► Several new axioms are proposed. ► A new simple formula for the weighted Shapley value is found. ► The role of players’ weights in the weighted Shapley value is widely discussed.