Abstract: After carriers forming an alliance, because each carrier operates according to its own profits, the benefit of each member is usually not in line with the whole alliance’s, which leads to the instability of alliance. Carriers have two choices when facing emerging customer needs: refuse or accept. Combined the constraints, and based on the establishment of shipping logistics network operated by a carrier alliance, cooperative game theory and mathematical programming method are utilized to establish the cooperative model of carrier alliance. And effective allocation mechanism is designed to provide side payment to each member. The decision process of alliance and individual member is modeled respectively, and inverse optimization technique is utilized to make the optimal decision of individual member accord with the whole alliance’s. In this way, the sustainability of alliance and collaboration is realized.
 

Key words: cooperative game, carrier alliance, mechanism design, inverse optimization