Playing games: A fresh look at rate and capacity regions

Notions from cooperative game theory arise in a very natural way in connection with the study of rate and capacity regions for many important problems. Furthermore, (i) game theory clarifies the fundamental structural connection between rate regions and information inequalities, and (ii) the interpretation of these regions in terms of users that are thought of as players in a cooperative game is of intrinsic value. Both these aspects are illustrated in a variety of settings, including Slepian-Wolf compression and Gaussian multiple access channels.