Characterizing Welfare-egalitarian Mechanisms with Solidarity When Valuations are Private Information

In the problem of assigning indivisible goods and monetary transfers, we characterize welfare-egalitarian mechanisms (that are decision-efficient and incentive compatible) with an axiom of solidarity under preference changes and a fair ranking axiom of order preservation. This result is in line with characterizations of egalitarian rules with solidarity in other economic models. We also show that we can replace order-preservation with egalitarian-equivalence or no-envy (on the subadditive domain) and still characterize the welfare-egalitarian class. We show that, in the model we consider, the welfare-egalitarian mechanisms appear to be the best candidates to satisfy several different fairness and solidarity requirements as well as generating bounded deficits.egalitarianism, solidarity, order preservation, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, distributive justice, NIMBY problems, imposition of tasks, allocation of indivisible (public) goods and money, the Groves mechanisms, strategy-proofness

Welfare Bounds in a Growing Population

We study the allocation of collectively owned indivisible goods when monetary transfers are possible. We restrict our attention to incentive compatible mechanisms which allocate the goods efficiently. Among these mechanisms, we characterize those that respect welfare lower bounds. The main characterization involves the identical-preferences lower-bound: each agent should be at least as well off as in an hypothetical economy where all agents have the same preference as hers, no agent envies another, and the budget is balanced. This welfare lower-bound grants agents equal rights/responsibilities over the jointly owned resources but insures agents against the heterogeneity in preferences. We also study the implications of imposing variable population axioms together with welfare bounds.collective ownership, allocation of indivisible goods and money, NIMBY problems, imposition of tasks, the Groves mechanisms, the identical-preferences lower-bound, individual rationality, the stand-alone lower-bound, k-fairness, population monotonicity

Characterizing the Shapley Value in Fixed-Route Traveling Salesman Problems with Appointments

Starting from her home, a service provider visits several customers, following a predetermined route, and returns home after all customers are visited. The problem is to ?nd a fair allocation of the total cost of this tour among the customers served. A transferable-utility cooperative game can be associated with this cost allocation problem. We intro- duce a new class of games, which we refer as the fixed-route traveling salesman games with appointments. We characterize the Shapley Value in this class using a property which requires that sponsors do not bene?t from mergers, or splitting into a set of sponsors.Fixed-route travelling salesman games, routing games, appointment games, the Shapley value, the core, transferable-utility games, merging and splitting proofness, networks, cost allocation

Equivalence of Resource/Opportunity Egalitarianism and Welfare Egalitarianism in Quasilinear Domains

We study the allocation of indivisible goods when monetary transfers are possible and preferences are quasilinear. We show that the only allocation mechanism (upto Pareto-indifference) that satisfies the axioms supporting resource and opportunity egalitarianism is the one that equalizes the welfares. We present alternative characterizations, and budget properties of this mechanism and discuss how it would ensure fair compensation in government requisitions and condemnations.egalitarianism, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, distributive justice, allocation of indivisible goods and money, fair auctions, the Groves mechanisms, strategy-proofness, population monotonicity, cost monotonicity, government requisitions, eminent domain

Axiomatizing Political Philosophy of Distributive Justice: Equivalence of No-envy and Egalitarian-equivalence with Welfare-egalitarianism

We characterize welfare-egalitarian mechanisms (that are decision-efficient and incentive compatible) with the two fundamental axioms of fairness: no-envy and egalitarian-equivalence. We consider cases where agents have equal rights over external world resources but are individually responsible for their preferences/costs. Our characterization answers the political philosophy question of what kind of welfare differentials allowed if we respect private ownership rights over self and public ownership over external world. We also relate no-envy and egalitarian-equivalence to "equality of what" debate and build a link between resource and opportunity egalitarianism, and welfare-egalitarianism.egalitarianism, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, distributive justice, equality of opportunity, resource egalitarianism, private ownership of the self and public ownership of external world, NIMBY problems, allocation of indivisible goods and money, discrete public goods, strategy-proofness.

Egalitarian-equivalent Groves Mechanisms in the Allocation of Heterogeneous Objects

We study the problem of allocating objects when monetary transfers are possible. We are interested in mechanisms that allocate the objects in an efficient way and induce the agents to report their true preferences. Within the class of such mechanisms, first we characterize egalitarian-equivalent mechanisms. Then, we add a bounded-deficit condition and characterize the corresponding class. Finally, we investigate the relations between egalitarian-equivalence and other fairness notions such as no-envy.fairness, allocation of indivisible goods and money, task assignments, strategy-proofness, the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanisms, egalitarian-equivalence, no-envy, order preservation

Appointment Games in Fixed-Route Traveling Salesman Problems and the Shapley Value

Starting from her home, a service provider visits several customers, following a predetermined route, and returns home after all customers are visited. The problem is to find a fair allocation of the total cost of this tour among the customers served. A transferable-utility cooperative game can be associated with this cost allocation problem. We introduce a new class of games, which we refer as the fixed-route traveling salesman games with appointments. We study the Shapley Value in this class and show that it is in the core. Our first characterization of the Shapley value involves a property which requires that sponsors do not benefit from mergers, or splitting into a set of sponsors. Our second theorem involves a property which requires that the cost shares of two sponsors who get connected are equally effected. We also show that except for our second theorem, none of our results for appointment games extend to the class of routing games (Potters et al, 1992).fixed-route traveling salesman games, routing games, appointment games, the Shapley value, the core, transferable-utility games, merging and splitting proofness, equal impact, networks, cost allocation.

Existence of Equilibrium in Incomplete Markets with Non-Ordered Preferences

In this paper we extend the results of recent studies on the existence of equilibrium in finite dimensional asset markets for both bounded and unbounded economies. We do not assume that the individual's preferences are complete or transitive. Our existence theorems for asset markets allow for short selling. We shall also show that the equilibrium achieves a constrained core within the same framework.Incomplete Preferences, Intransitive Preferences, Incomplete Markets, General Equilibrium, Constrained Core, Convex Analysis