Complexity of the Minimum Base Game on Matroids

This paper studies the complexity of computing solution concepts for a cooperative game, called the minimum base game (MBG) (E; c), where its characteristic function c : 2 E 7! < is de ned as c(S) = (the weight w(B) of a minimum weighted base B S), for a given matroid M = (E;I) and a weight functionw : E 7! <. The minimum base game contains, as a special case, the minimum spanning tree game (MSTG) in an edge-weighted graph in which players are located on the edges. By interpreting solution concepts of games (such as core, -value and Shapley value) in terms of matroid theory, we obtain: The core of MBG is nonempty if and only if the matroid M has no circuit consisting only of edges with negative weights; Checking the concavity and subadditivity of an MBG can be done in oracle-polynomial time; The -value of an MBG exists if and only if the core is not empty, the -value of MSTG can be computed in polynomial time while there is no oracle-polynomial algorithm for a general MBG; Computing the Shapley value of an MSTG is #P-complete, and there is no oracle-polynomial algorithm for computing the Shapley-value of an MBG.