Let $k\ge 2$ be an integer and let A be a set of nonnegative integers. The representation function $R_{A,k}(n)$ for the set A is the number of representations of a nonnegative integer n as the sum of k terms from A. Let $A(n)$ denote the counting function of A. Bell and Shallit [‘Counterexamples to a conjecture of Dombi in additive number theory’, Acta Math. Hung., to appear] recently gave a counterexample for a conjecture of Dombi and proved that if $A(n)=o(n^{{(k-2)}/{k}-\epsilon })$ for some $\epsilon>0$, then $R_{\mathbb {N}\setminus A,k}(n)$ is eventually strictly increasing. We improve this result to $A(n)=O(n^{{(k-2)}/{(k-1)}})$. We also give an example to show that this bound is best possible.

Let k and l be positive integers satisfying $k \ge 2, l \ge 1$ . A set $\mathcal {A}$ of positive integers is an asymptotic basis of order k if every large enough positive integer can be represented as the sum of k terms from $\mathcal {A}$ . About 35 years ago, P. Erdős asked: does there exist an asymptotic basis of order k where all the subset sums with at most l terms are pairwise distinct with the exception of a finite number of cases as long as $l \le k - 1$ ? We use probabilistic tools to prove the existence of an asymptotic basis of order $2k+1$ for which all the sums of at most k elements are pairwise distinct except for ‘small’ numbers.

An additive basis $A$ is finitely stable when the order of $A$ is equal to the order of $A\cup F$ for all finite subsets $F\subseteq \mathbb{N}$. We give a sufficient condition for an additive basis to be finitely stable. In particular, we prove that $\mathbb{N}^{2}$ is finitely stable.

For a given integer $n$ and a set $ \mathcal{S} \subseteq \mathbb{N} $, denote by ${ R}_{h, \mathcal{S} }^{(1)} (n)$ the number of solutions of the equation $n= {s}_{{i}_{1} } + \cdots + {s}_{{i}_{h} } $, ${s}_{{i}_{j} } \in \mathcal{S} $, $j= 1, \ldots , h$. In this paper we determine all pairs $( \mathcal{A} , \mathcal{B} )$, $ \mathcal{A} , \mathcal{B} \subseteq \mathbb{N} $, for which ${ R}_{3, \mathcal{A} }^{(1)} (n)= { R}_{3, \mathcal{B} }^{(1)} (n)$ from a certain point on. We discuss some related problems.

A precise description of a subset $\mathcal{A}$ of $\mathbb{Z} / n \mathbb{Z}$ satisfying

$$ | \mathcal{A} + \mathcal{A} | \leq 2.04 | \mathcal{A} | $$

is given. Basically, there exists a subgroup $\mathcal{H}$ of $\mathbb{Z} / n \mathbb{Z}$ such that $\mathcal{A}$ is included in an arithmetic progression of $\ell$ cosets modulo $\mathcal{H}$ and

$$(\ell - 1) | \mathcal{H} | \leq | \mathcal{A} + \mathcal{A} | - | \mathcal{A} |.$$

2000 Mathematical Subject Classification: 11B50, 11B83, 20E34.