Cooperative Game Theory

This chapter provides an introduction to cooperative game theory, which complements noncooperative game theory (Chapter 2). Both of these fields study strategic aspects of cooperation and competition among the players and have been considered since the early days of game theory by von Neumann and Morgenstern [736]. In noncooperative game theory, players are assumed to choose their actions individually, selfishly seeking to realize their own goals and to maximize their own profit. While this does not mean that players are necessarily adversarial to each other (for example, they may prefer the dove strategy over the hawk strategy in the chicken game), they do not coordinate their actions and cannot make payments to each other.