70,427 research outputs found
Fair allocation of multiple resources using a non-monetary allocation mechanism
The fair allocation of scarce resources is relevant to a wide field of applications. For example, cloud resources, such as CPU, RAM, disk space, and bandwidth, have to be shared. This paper presents a mechanism to find fair allocations of multiple divisible resources, which, contrary to other mechanisms, is applicable to but not limited to the example above. Wide applicability of the mechanism is achieved by designing it (1) to scale with the number of consumers and resources, (2) to allow for arbitrary preference functions of consumers, and (3) to not rely on monetary compensation. The mechanism uses a mathematical definition of greediness to balance resources consumers receive and thereby to compute a fair allocation
A Mechanism for Fair Distribution of Resources without Payments
We design a mechanism for Fair and Efficient Distribution of Resources
(FEDoR) in the presence of strategic agents. We consider a multiple-instances,
Bayesian setting, where in each round the preference of an agent over the set
of resources is a private information. We assume that in each of r rounds n
agents are competing for k non-identical indivisible goods, (n > k). In each
round the strategic agents declare how much they value receiving any of the
goods in the specific round. The agent declaring the highest valuation receives
the good with the highest value, the agent with the second highest valuation
receives the second highest valued good, etc. Hence we assume a decision
function that assigns goods to agents based on their valuations. The novelty of
the mechanism is that no payment scheme is required to achieve truthfulness in
a setting with rational/strategic agents. The FEDoR mechanism takes advantage
of the repeated nature of the framework, and through a statistical test is able
to punish the misreporting agents and be fair, truthful, and socially
efficient. FEDoR is fair in the sense that, in expectation over the course of
the rounds, all agents will receive the same good the same amount of times.
FEDoR is an eligible candidate for applications that require fair distribution
of resources over time. For example, equal share of bandwidth for nodes through
the same point of access. But further on, FEDoR can be applied in less trivial
settings like sponsored search, where payment is necessary and can be given in
the form of a flat participation fee. To this extent we perform a comparison
with traditional mechanisms applied to sponsored search, presenting the
advantage of FEDoR
Trading reliability targets within a supply chain using Shapley's value
The development of complex systems involves a multi-tier supply chain, with each organisation allocated a reliability target for their sub-system or component part apportioned from system requirements. Agreements about targets are made early in the system lifecycle when considerable uncertainty exists about the design detail and potential failure modes. Hence resources required to achieve reliability are unpredictable. Some types of contracts provide incentives for organisations to negotiate targets so that system reliability requirements are met, but at minimum cost to the supply chain. This paper proposes a mechanism for deriving a fair price for trading reliability targets between suppliers using information gained about potential failure modes through development and the costs of activities required to generate such information. The approach is based upon Shapley's value and is illustrated through examples for a particular reliability growth model, and associated empirical cost model, developed for problems motivated by the aerospace industry. The paper aims to demonstrate the feasibility of the method and discuss how it could be extended to other reliability allocation models
The river sharing problem: A review of the technical literature for policy economists
Water is essential for life. However, the basic problem of water resource allocation has been that water tends to be over-allocated. Demand for water exceeds the available supply. Essentially, the water economy is bankrupt. Bankruptcy problems have been almost exhaustively studied in the literature on economic theory-primarily from the perspective of cooperative game theory. The main concern of this literature has been how to fairly divide up the assets of a bankrupt entity. In water resource economics cooperative game theory has often been employed as a means of analyzing water resource allocation. It was only recently that the problem of directional flow was incorporated into such analyses. This has come to be known as the “river sharing problem” in the theoretical literature. Accounting for the direction of flow in water resource allocation problems has profound implications for policies that wish to facilitate both fair and efficient water allocations. This is the case whether proposed policies are interventionist or market based in nature. There is now a considerable literature on the allocation and distribution of water resources characterized by unidirectional flow. In this paper I critically review and appraise this literature with a view to making it more accessible to applied and policy economists. A key feature of the paper is that the connection between the bankruptcy literature, which has recently also realized the importance of flow, and the river sharing literature is discussed. The current state of the art in game theoretic models of water resource allocation with directional flow is discussed and implications and consequences for water resource policy highlightedRiver sharing problem, Bankruptcy, Cooperative game theory, Water resouyrce allocation, distributive justice
Fair division with general equilibrium effects and international climate politics
This paper introduces a solution for the fair division of common property resources in production economies with multiple inputs and outputs. It is derived from complementing the Walrasian solution by welfare bounds, whose ethical justification rests on commonality of ownership. We then apply this solution to the question of burden sharing in the climate change regime, using an intertemporal computable general equilibrium model. For a wide range of initial allocations of CO2 emission rights, we find that developing countries should participate in emission reduction efforts in order to increase their global efficiency, but should also be fully compensated for their incremental abatement costs. --Fair division,climate change,common property resources,welfare bounds,CGE models
ERA: A Framework for Economic Resource Allocation for the Cloud
Cloud computing has reached significant maturity from a systems perspective,
but currently deployed solutions rely on rather basic economics mechanisms that
yield suboptimal allocation of the costly hardware resources. In this paper we
present Economic Resource Allocation (ERA), a complete framework for scheduling
and pricing cloud resources, aimed at increasing the efficiency of cloud
resources usage by allocating resources according to economic principles. The
ERA architecture carefully abstracts the underlying cloud infrastructure,
enabling the development of scheduling and pricing algorithms independently of
the concrete lower-level cloud infrastructure and independently of its
concerns. Specifically, ERA is designed as a flexible layer that can sit on top
of any cloud system and interfaces with both the cloud resource manager and
with the users who reserve resources to run their jobs. The jobs are scheduled
based on prices that are dynamically calculated according to the predicted
demand. Additionally, ERA provides a key internal API to pluggable algorithmic
modules that include scheduling, pricing and demand prediction. We provide a
proof-of-concept software and demonstrate the effectiveness of the architecture
by testing ERA over both public and private cloud systems -- Azure Batch of
Microsoft and Hadoop/YARN. A broader intent of our work is to foster
collaborations between economics and system communities. To that end, we have
developed a simulation platform via which economics and system experts can test
their algorithmic implementations
- …