The Bird Core for Minimum Cost Spanning Tree Problems Revisited: Monotonicity and Additivity Aspects

Abstract

A new way is presented to define for minimum cost spanning tree (mcst-) games the irreducible core, which is introduced by Bird in 1976. The Bird core correspondence turns out to have interesting monotonicity and additivity properties and each stable cost monotonic allocation rule for mcst-problems is a selection of the Bird core correspondence. Using the additivity property an axiomatic characterization of the Bird core correspondence is obtained.

Keywords: Cost allocation, minimum cost spanning tree games, Bird cor, cost monotonicity, cone additivity

JEL Classification: C71