The influence of variables on pseudo-Boolean functions with applications to game theory and multicriteria decision making

The power of players in a collective decision process is a central issue in game theory. For this reason. the concept of influence of players on a simple game has been introduced. More generally, the influence of variables on Boolean functions has been defined and studied. We extend this concept to pseudo-Boolean functions, thus making it possible to appraise the degree of influence of any coalition of players in cooperative games. In the case of monotone games, we also point out the links with the concept of interaction among players. Although they do not have the same meaning at all, both influence and interaction functions coincide on singletons with the so-called Banzhaf power index. We also define the influence of variables on continuous extensions of pseudo-Boolean functions. In particular, the Lovasz extension, also called discrete Choquet integral, is used in multicriteria decision making problems as an aggregation operator. In such problems, the degree of influence of decision criteria on the aggregation process can then be quite relevant information. We give the explicit form of this influence for the Choquet integral and its classical particular cases. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.