Cooperation in Subset Team Games: Altruism and Selfishness

Abstract

This paper extends the theory of subset team games, a generalization of cooperative game theory requiring a payoff function that is defined for all subsets of players. This subset utility is used to define both altruistic and selfish contributions of a player to the team. We investigate properties of these games, and analyze the implications of altruism and selfishness for general situations, for prisoner's dilemma, and for a specific game with a Cobb-Douglas utility.