Shapley Distance and Shapley Index for Some Special Graphs

Abstract

The Shapley distance in a graph is defined based on Shapley value in cooperative game theory. It is used to measure the cost for a vertex in a graph to access another vertex. In this paper, we establish the Shapley distance between two arbitrary vertices for some special graphs, i.e., path, tree, cycle, complete graph, complete bipartite, and complete multipartite graph. Moreover, based on the Shapley distance, we propose a new index, namely Shapley index, and then compare Shapley index with Wiener index and Kirchhoff index for these special graphs. We also characterize the extremal graphs in which these three indices are equal.