Design of a Coordination Process for Cost Sharing

Abstract

"This paper proposes use of a coordination process for cost sharing. The underlying premise is that complexity may be as serious as free-riding for cooperative group outcomes. A coordination process is a group algorithmic search method to find an optimal solution to the group decision problem. The design is based on market-like principles: decentralization of computation tasks, privacy of preference information, individual rationality, group feasibility and optimality, and use of price as an equilibrating tool. Three types of coordination process described in this paper differ in terms of the nature of the message space, associated allocation rules, and procedures."