Allocation Rules for Games with Optimistic Aspirations

In this paper we introduce games with optimistic aspirations and identify attractive allocation rules for such games through axiomatizations. A game with optimistic aspirations specifies two values for each coalition of players: the first value is the worth that the players in the coalition can guarantee for themselves in the event that they coordinate their actions (where the word guarantee implies a very conservative attitude), and the second value is the amount that the players in the coalition aspire to get under reasonable but very optimistic assumptions about the demands of the players who are not included in the coalition. We explain games with optimistic aspirations as well as our motivation for introducing such games by means of an example