A competitive test of the descriptive accuracy of the characteristic function, power function, and shapley value based function

✍ Scribed by Melvin M. Sakurai

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 957 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-5833
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00135035

✦ Synopsis

The mathematical theory of n-person games is comprised of two major elements. A descriptive theory models or represents structural properties of a game, while a solution theory predicts the final outcome (i.e., distribution of payoffs). The purpose of this study is to competitively evaluate the representational adequacy of three descriptive theories which include the characteristic function, power function, and Shapley value based function. Subjects were 60 undergraduate males who participated in twenty 3-person experimental groups. Results disclose the power function theory to be significantly and consistently superior to both the characteristic function and Shapely value based function in terms of descriptive accuracy (p < 0.01).