Coalition formation in n-person stackelberg games

Stackelberg games and their resulting nonconvex programming problems have been used to model multilevel economic systems. These formulations have suggested that independent players, acting sequentially, may not produce Pareto-optimal decisions. Such systems naturally encourage the introduction of an n-player abstract game which permits coalitions of players to form. This paper examines the mathematical characteristics of these imbedded games and the implications of their solution for the overall problem.