Fair allocation of indivisible goods among two agents

One must allocate a finite set of indivisible goods among two agents without monetary compensation. We impose Pareto-efficiency, anonymity, a weak notion of no-envy, a welfare lower bound based on each agent’s ranking of the sets of goods, and a monotonicity property relative to changes in agents’ preferences. We prove that there is a rule satisfying these axioms. If there are three goods, it is the only rule, with one of its subcorrespondences, satisfying each fairness axiom and not discriminating between goods. Further, we confirm the clear gap between these economies and those with more than two agents.indivisible goods, no monetary compensation, no-envy, lower bound, preference-monotonicity

Characterizations of Pareto-efficient, fair, and strategy-proof allocation rules in queueing problems

A set of agents with possibly different waiting costs have to receive the same service one after the other. Efficiency requires to maximize total welfare. Equity requires to at least treat equal agents equally. One must form a queue, set up monetary transfers to compensate agents having to wait, and not a priori arbitrarily exclude agents from positions. As one may not know agents’ waiting costs, they may have no incentive to reveal them. We identify the only rule satisfying Pareto-efficiency, a weak equity axiom as equal treatment of equals in welfare or symmetry, and strategy-proofness. It satisfies stronger axioms, as no-envy and anonymity. Further, its desirability extends to related problems. To obtain these results, we prove that even non-single-valued rules satisfy Pareto-efficiency of queues and strategy-proofness if and only if they select Pareto-efficient queues and set transfers in the spirit of Groves (1973). This holds in other problems, provided the domain of quasi-linear preferences is rich enough.queueing problems, efficiency, fairness, strategy-proofness

An Impossibility in Sequencing Problems

A set of agents with different waiting costs have to receive a service of different length of time from a single provider which can serve only one agent at a time. One needs to form a queue and set up monetary transfers to compensate the agents who have to wait. We prove that no rule satisfies efficiency of queues and coalitional strategy-proofness.mathematical economics;

Characterizations of Pareto-efficient, fair, and strategy-proof allocation rules in queueing problems

A set of agents with possibly different waiting costs have to receive the same service one after the other. Efficiency requires to maximize total welfare. Equity requires to at least treat equal agents equally. One must form a queue, set up monetary transfers to compensate agents having to wait, and not a priori arbitrarily exclude agents from positions. As one may not know agents’ waiting costs, they may have no incentive to reveal them. We identify the only rule satisfying Paretoefficiency, a weak equity axiom as equal treatment of equals in welfare or symmetry, and strategyproofness. It satisfies stronger axioms, as no-envy and anonymity. Further, its desirability extends to related problems. To obtain these results, we prove that even non-single-valued rules satisfy Pareto-efficiency of queues and strategy-proofness if and only if they select Pareto-efficient queues and set transfers in the spirit of Groves (1973). This holds in other problems, provided the domain of quasi-linear preferences is rich enough

Fair allocation of indivisible goods: the two-agent case

One must allocate a finite set of indivisible goods among two agents without monetary compensation. We impose Pareto-efficiency, anonymity, a weak notion of no-envy, a welfare lower bound based on each agent's ranking of the subsets of goods, and a monotonicity property w.r.t. changes in preferences. We prove that there is a rule satisfying these axioms. If there are three goods, it is the only rule, together with one of its subcorrespondences, satisfying each fairness axiom and not discriminating between goods

Fair allocation of indivisible goods among two agents

One must allocate a finite set of indivisible goods among two agents without monetary compensation. We impose Pareto-efficiency, anonymity, a weak notion of no-envy, a welfare lower bound based on each agent’s ranking of the sets of goods, and a monotonicity property relative to changes in agents’ preferences. We prove that there is a rule satisfying these axioms. If there are three goods, it is the only rule, with one of its subcorrespondences, satisfying each fairness axiom and not discriminating between goods. Further, we confirm the clear gap between these economies and those with more than two agents

Caracterizaciones de reglas de asignación Paretoeficientes, justas y a prueba de estrategias en problemas de colas

A set of agents with possibly different waiting costs have to receive the same service one after the other. Efficiency requires to maximize total welfare. Fairness requires to treat equal agents equally. One must form a queue, set up monetary transfers to compensate agents having to wait, and not a priori arbitrarily exclude agents from positions. As one may not know agents' waiting costs, they may have no incentive to reveal them. We identify the only rule satisfying Pareto-efficiency, equal treatment of equals in welfare or symmetry, and strategy-proofness. It satisfies stronger axioms, as no-envy and anonymity. Further, its desirability extends to related problems. To obtain these results, we prove that a rule, single-valued or not, satisfies queue-efficiency and strategy-proofness if and only if it always selects efficient queues and sets transfers à la Groves [Groves, T., 1973. Incentives in teams. Econometrica 41, 617–631]. This holds in other problems, provided the domain of quasi-linear preferences is rich enough