The work we present in this paper initiated the formal study of fractional hedonic games, coalition formation games in which the utility of a player is the average value he ascribes to the members of his coalition. Among other settings, this covers situations in which players only distinguish between friends and non-friends and desire to be in a coalition in which the fraction of friends is maximal. Fractional hedonic games thus not only constitute a natural class of succinctly representable coalition formation games, but also provide an interesting framework for network clustering. We propose a number of conditions under which the core of fractional hedonic games is non-empty and provide algorithms for computing a core stable outcome. By contrast, we show that the core may be empty in other cases, and that it is computationally hard in general to decide non-emptiness of the core. the partitions in the strict core, and give a polynomial time algorithm to compute a unique finest partition in the strict core.• We discuss how computing desirable outcomes in fractional hedonic games provides an interesting game-theoretic perspective to community detection [see, e.g., Fortunato, 2010, Newman, 2004 and network clustering. 2 RELATED WORKFractional hedonic games are related to additively separable hedonic games [see, e.g., , Olsen, 2009, Sung and Dimitrov, 2010. In both fractional hedonic games and additively separable hedonic games, each player ascribes a cardinal value to every other player. In additively separable hedonic games, utility in a coalition is derived by adding the values for the other players. By contrast, in fractional hedonic games, utility in a coalition is derived by adding the values for the other players and then dividing the sum by the total number of players in the coalition. Although conceptually, additively separable and fractional hedonic games are similar, their formal properties are quite different. As neither of the two models is obviously superior, this shows how slight modeling decisions may affect the formal analysis. For example, in unweighted and undirected graphs, the grand coalition is trivially core stable for additively separable hedonic games.On the other hand, this is not the case for fractional hedonic games. 3 A fractional hedonic game approach to social networks with only non-negative weights may help detect like-minded and densely connected communities. In comparison, when the network only has non-negative weights for the edges, any reasonable solution for the corresponding additively separable hedonic game returns the grand coalition, which is not informative. The difference between additively separable and fractional hedonic games is reminiscent of some issues in population ethics (see, e.g., Arrhenius et al., 2017), which concerns the evaluation of states of the world with different numbers of individuals alive. Two prominent principles in population ethics are total utilitarianism and average utilitarianism. The former claims that a state of the world is better than another...

Iterated games are well-known in the game theory literature. We study iterated Boolean games. These are games in which players repeatedly choose truth values for Boolean variables they have control over. Our model of iterated Boolean games assumes that players have goals given by formulae of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), a formalism for expressing properties of state sequences. In order to represent the strategies of players in such games, we use a finite state machine model. After introducing and formally defining iterated Boolean games, we investigate the computational complexity of their associated game-theoretic decision problems, as well as semantic conditions characterising classes of LTL properties that are preserved by equilibrium points (pure-strategy Nash equilibria) whenever they exist.

Model checking is the best-known and most successful approach to formally verifying that systems satisfy specifications, expressed as temporal logic formulae. In this article, we develop the theory of equilibrium checking, a related but distinct problem. Equilibrium checking is relevant for multi-agent systems in which system components (agents) are assumed to be acting rationally in pursuit of delegated goals, and is concerned with understanding what temporal properties hold of such systems under the assumption that agents select strategies in equilibrium. The formal framework we use to study this problem assumes agents are modelled using REACTIVE MODULES, a system modelling language that is used in a range of practical model checking systems. Each agent (or player) in a REACTIVE MODULES game is specified as a nondeterministic guarded command program, and each player's goal is specified with a temporal logic formula that the player desires to see satisfied. A strategy for a player in a REACTIVE MODULES game defines how that player selects enabled guarded commands for execution over successive rounds of the game. For this general setting, we investigate games in which players have goals specified in Linear Temporal Logic (in which case it is assumed that players choose deterministic strategies) and in Computation Tree Logic (in which case players select nondeterministic strategies). For each of these cases, after formally defining the game setting, we characterise the complexity of a range of problems relating to Nash equilibria (e.g., the computation or the verification of existence of a Nash equilibrium or checking whether a given temporal formula is satisfied on some Nash equilibrium). We then go on to show how the model we present can be used to encode, for example, games in which the choices available to players are specified using STRIPS planning operators.

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Abstract. A minimal requirement on allocative efficiency in the social sciences is Pareto optimality. In this paper, we identify a far-reaching structural connection between Pareto optimal and perfect partitions that has various algorithmic consequences for coalition formation. In particular, we show that computing and verifying Pareto optimal partitions in general hedonic games and B-hedonic games is intractable while both problems are tractable for roommate games and W-hedonic games. The latter two positive results are obtained by reductions to maximum weight matching and clique packing, respectively.