The Fair and Efficient Division of the Winsor Family Silver

John Winsor Pratt and Richard Zeckhauser
Additional contact information
John Winsor Pratt: Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 02163

Management Science, 1990, vol. 36, issue 11, 1293-1301

Abstract: This is the true story of the actual use of a formal, decentralized division procedure to allocate silver heirlooms among eight grandchildren fairly and efficiently without distasteful direct monetary payments. Each grandchild's stated preferences for objects in contention were roughly represented by a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Allocations were made as they would be in a market for probability shares in the objects, assuming each grandchild had a fixed amount of an artificial currency and made optimal purchases. The market-clearing equilibrium prices were chosen as in a second-price auction to reward honest reporting. Although the procedure was decentralized and most participants did not fully understand it or the preference information desired, it handled all major considerations well and was regarded as equitable.

Keywords: fair division; incentive compatibility; probability shares; efficient allocation; pseudo-market; preference revelation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.36.11.1293 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:36:y:1990:i:11:p:1293-1301

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().