Paths and consistency in additive cost sharing

We provide a direct proof of a representation theorem for additive cost sharing methods as sums of path methods. Also, by directly considering the paths that generate some common additive cost sharing methods (Aumann-Shapley, Shapley Shubik, and Serial Cost) we show that they are consistent. These results follow directly from a simple sufficient condition for consistency: being generated by an associative path. We also introduce a new axiom, dummy consistency, which is quite mild. Using this, we also show that the Aumann-Shapley and Serial Cost methods are the unique (additive) consistent extension of their restriction on all two agent problems, while the Shapley-Shubik method has multiple consistent extensions but a unique anonymous scale invariant one. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2004