Economic lot-sizing games

In this paper we introduce a new class of OR games: economic lot-sizing (ELS) games. There are a number of retailers that have a known demand for a fixed number of periods. To satisfy demand the retailers order products at the same manufacturer. By placing joint orders instead of individual orders, costs can be reduced and a cooperative game arises. In this paper we show that ELS games are balanced. Furthermore, we show that two special classes of ELS games are concave.