170 research outputs found
Local Envy-Freeness in House Allocation Problems
International audienceWe study the fair division problem consisting in allocating one item per agent so as to avoid (or minimize) envy, in a setting where only agents connected in a given social network may experience envy. In a variant of the problem, agents themselves can be located on the network by the central authority. These problems turn out to be difficult even on very simple graph structures, but we identify several tractable cases. We further provide practical algorithms and experimental insights
A Generalization of the AL method for Fair Allocation of Indivisible Objects
We consider the assignment problem in which agents express ordinal
preferences over objects and the objects are allocated to the agents based
on the preferences. In a recent paper, Brams, Kilgour, and Klamler (2014)
presented the AL method to compute an envy-free assignment for two agents. The
AL method crucially depends on the assumption that agents have strict
preferences over objects. We generalize the AL method to the case where agents
may express indifferences and prove the axiomatic properties satisfied by the
algorithm. As a result of the generalization, we also get a speedup on
previous algorithms to check whether a complete envy-free assignment exists or
not. Finally, we show that unless P=NP, there can be no polynomial-time
extension of GAL to the case of arbitrary number of agents
Optimal Partitions in Additively Separable Hedonic Games
We conduct a computational analysis of fair and optimal partitions in
additively separable hedonic games. We show that, for strict preferences, a
Pareto optimal partition can be found in polynomial time while verifying
whether a given partition is Pareto optimal is coNP-complete, even when
preferences are symmetric and strict. Moreover, computing a partition with
maximum egalitarian or utilitarian social welfare or one which is both Pareto
optimal and individually rational is NP-hard. We also prove that checking
whether there exists a partition which is both Pareto optimal and envy-free is
-complete. Even though an envy-free partition and a Nash stable
partition are both guaranteed to exist for symmetric preferences, checking
whether there exists a partition which is both envy-free and Nash stable is
NP-complete.Comment: 11 pages; A preliminary version of this work was invited for
presentation in the session `Cooperative Games and Combinatorial
Optimization' at the 24th European Conference on Operational Research (EURO
2010) in Lisbo
House allocation with fractional endowments
This paper studies a generalization of the well known house allocation problem in which agents may own fractions of different houses summing to an arbitrary quantity, but have use for only the equivalent of one unit of a house. It departs from the classical model by assuming that arbitrary quantities of each house may be available to the market. Justified envy considerations arise when two agents have the same initial endowment, or when an agent is in some sense disproportionately rewarded in comparison to her peers. For this general model, an algorithm is designed to find a fractional allocation of houses to agents that satisfies ordinal efficiency, individual rationality, and no justified envy. The analysis extend to the full preference domain. Individual rationality, ordinal efficiency, and no justified envy conflict with weak strategyproofness. Moreover, individual rationality, ordinal efficiency and strategyproofness are shown to be incompatible. Finally, two reasonable notions of envy-freeness, no justified envy and equal-endowment no envy, conflict in the presence of ordinal efficiency and individual rationality. All of the impossibility results hold in the strict preference domain.house allocation, fractional endowments, fairness, individual rationality
Dividing bads under additive utilities
We compare the Egalitarian rule (aka Egalitarian Equivalent) and the Competitive rule (aka Comeptitive Equilibrium with Equal Incomes) to divide bads (chores). They are both welfarist: the competitive disutility profile(s) are the critical points of their Nash product on the set of efficient feasible profiles. The C rule is Envy Free, Maskin Monotonic, and has better incentives properties than the E rule. But, unlike the E rule, it can be wildly multivalued, admits no selection continuous in the utility and endowment parameters, and is harder to compute. Thus in the division of bads, unlike that of goods, no rule normatively dominates the other
Envy-freeness in house allocation problems
We consider the house allocation problem, where m houses are to be assigned to n agents so that each agent gets exactly one house. We present a polynomial-time algorithm that determines whether an envy-free assignment exists, and if so, computes one such assignment. We also show that an envy-free assignment exists with high probability if the number of houses exceeds the number of agents by a logarithmic factor
Efficient Algorithms for Envy-Free Stick Division With Fewest Cuts
Given a set of n sticks of various (not necessarily different) lengths, what
is the largest length so that we can cut k equally long pieces of this length
from the given set of sticks? We analyze the structure of this problem and show
that it essentially reduces to a single call of a selection algorithm; we thus
obtain an optimal linear-time algorithm.
This algorithm also solves the related envy-free stick-division problem,
which Segal-Halevi, Hassidim, and Aumann (AAMAS, 2015) recently used as their
central primitive operation for the first discrete and bounded envy-free cake
cutting protocol with a proportionality guarantee when pieces can be put to
waste.Comment: v3 adds more context about the proble
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