General aggregation of demand and cost sharing methods

This paper extends the notion of cost sharing to models with general demand aggregation rules. In the process, aggregated serial cost sharing mechanis ms are defined and characterized. A framework for a dynamic view on cost sh aring is provided, introducing the notion of consistency to the generalized cost sharing model. Corresponding optimistic and pessimistic cooperative c ost games are defined and their cores are studied. In particular, we show t hat the class of bankruptcy problems can be seen as a special class of cost sharing problems. It is seen that the serial mechanism in this specific ca se is closely related to the Constrained Equal Award rule.