Equitable resource allocation combining coalitional game and data envelopment analysis

In this paper, while taking into account the cooperative relationships between units, the problem of revenue allocation is considered as a coalitional game. In order for the allocation to be equitable, by relying on the concept of DEA efficiency, a new characteristic function is presented, and then using the concept of the Shapley value, which is a well-recognized concept in coalitional game theory, a unique solution is obtained for the revenue allocation problem. And finally, to evaluate the equitability of the performed revenue allocation, the Gini coefficient is utilized. A comparison of the Gini coefficient obtained for our method with those of some existing methods showed that our method is more equitable than the previous ones. This demonstrates how impactful the wise and accurate selection of the characteristic function is in the equitability of the results.