Past exam of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2020 / Computational game theory / 3 / d

Yes; without self-loops, such a nontrivial simple cooperative game has exactly one positive edge, of weight $1$. For each pair,because singleton and loop contributions are zero. Summing all edge weights gives $v(N)=1$, so precisely one unordered pair $\{a,b\}$ has weight $1$, and all other pairs have weight zero.

Thus the winning coalitions are exactly those containing both $a$ and $b$. For any $0\le \lambda \le 1$, setThis payoff vector is efficient, since ${\sum }_i{x}_i=v(N)=1$. Every winning coalition receives $1$ and every losing coalition receives a nonnegative total, so all inequalities $x(S)\ge v(S)$ hold. Hence it belongs to the core of a cooperative game.

In fact these are all core allocations. Singleton conditions require $x_i\ge 0$, and the winning pair requires $x_a+x_b\ge 1$; efficiency then forces equality and zero payoffs outside the pair. The endpoints are both veto players, consistent with the general characterization of the core of a simple cooperative game.