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Cost Allocation (cost + allocation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	75%

Selected Abstracts

A multi-agent-based negotiation support system for distributed transmission cost allocation

INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IN ACCOUNTING, FINANCE & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2001
Yonghe Yan
We have developed a multi-agent system (MAS), based on the network flow model and KQML, called MASCAN, to support negotiations in the cost allocation of network transmission. This is very important to industries that have different entities connected with lines or pipes, such as the Internet and telecommunications. Such an approach is especially useful to the utility industries, such as electricity and gas, and the transportation industry. In the system, each agent represents a node in a network, for example supplier or consumer. Agents do not receive any centralized controls or information from centralized sources to guarantee autonomy,a key requirement for the agent. In this all decisions are made locally based on the rules or knowledge that each agent has or captured to communicate or coordinate with other agents for the cheapest path under fair-play requirements. We also assume that each agent is rational, that is, one of the goals or objectives of agent decisions or movements is to minimize costs or increase profits. The solution to cost allocation is to search for the equilibrium point of a non-cooperative game subject to the given constraints, for example network capacity. We applied MASCAN to model and support the negotiation of cost allocation in power transmission, and the results and how this approach supported the process of negotiation are perceived to be closer to the real-world negotiation and the outcomes were accepted more easily by the participants. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Public congestion network situations and related games

NETWORKS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2010
John Kleppe
Abstract This article analyses congestion in network situations from a cooperative game theoretic perspective. In network situations, players have to connect themselves to a source. As we consider publicly available networks, any group of players is allowed to use the entire network to establish their connections. We deal with the problem of finding an optimal network and discuss the associated cost allocation problem. For the latter, we introduce two different transferable utility cost games. For concave cost functions, we use the direct cost game, in which coalition costs are based on what a coalition can do in the absence of other players. This article, however, mainly discusses network situations with convex cost functions, which are analyzed by the use of the marginal cost game. In this game, the cost of a coalition is defined as the additional cost it induces when it joins the complementary group of players. We prove that this game is concave. Furthermore, we define a cost allocation by means of three equal treatment principles and show that this allocation is an element of the core of the marginal cost game. These results are extended to a class of continuous network situations and associated games. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, 2010 [source]

Accounting for Infrastructure Service Delivery by Government: Generational Issues

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2000
Michael McCrae
Infrastructure service provision by government creates huge distributional issues about service availability and performance over time and the relative funding burdens borne by successive generations of consumers across time. But providing financial disclosure on these issues through inter-generational accounting pre-supposes that accounting measurement is both generationally neutral (temporal neutrality) and does not legitimate any particular pattern of distribution. At the very least, accounting measurements of service provision costs should possess the attribute of distributional fairness. They should not bias the inter-generational allocation of cost or funding burdens. We argue that the forced application of inappropriate commercial accounting concepts of asset valuation, depreciation and capital maintenance does produce significant generational bias. More flexibility is required to produce the necessary accounting measurement attributes for financial disclosure on whether government has discharged its continuing accountability for inter-generational equity in burden sharing. We discuss three conceptual issues and illustrate the need for flexibility by proposing an alternative ,flow of obligations' approach which does not require reference to valuations of community service resources or arbitrary cost allocations under depreciation. [source]