Uncertain Participation

• Authors: Péter Bayer and Mánuel László Mágó
• BSE Working Paper: 1590 | September 2026
• Keywords: cooperative games, matching market, participation uncertainty, voting power, overselling
• JEL codes: C71, C72, D51, D72, D81

We introduce participation uncertainty to the theory of cooperative TU- games. Under participation uncertainty, each coalition’s effective value is an expected value taken over the (full) value of its subsets. We identify ‘constant-marginal’ participation as a key property for various economic problems to be well-behaved. This class of uncertainty environments is closed for mixing and composition. Under this property, solution concepts are easily calculated, two-sided markets clear and are insurable, and voting power under uncertain participation can be characterized and efficiently computed.