NULL PLAYERS OUT? LINEAR VALUES FOR GAMES WITH VARIABLE SUPPORTS

The paper studies the consequences of the Null Player Out (NPO) property for single-valued solutions on the class of cooperative games in characteristic function form. We allow for variable player populations (supports or carriers). A solution satisfies the NPO property, if elimination of a null player does not affect the payoffs of the other players. Our main emphasis lies on individual values. For linear values satisfying the null player property and a weak symmetry property, necessary and sufficient conditions for the NPO property are derived.