On fair division of a homogeneous good

Uriel Feige and Moshe Tennenholtz

Games and Economic Behavior, 2014, vol. 87, issue C, 305-321

Abstract: We consider the problem of dividing a homogeneous divisible good among n players. Each player holds a private non-negative utility function that depends only on the amount of the good that he receives. We define the fair share of a player P to be the average utility that a player could receive if all players had the same utility function as P. We present a randomized allocation mechanism in which every player has a dominant strategy for maximizing his expected utility. Every player that follows his dominant strategy is guaranteed to receive an expected utility of at least n/(2n−1) of his fair share. This is best possible in the sense that there is a collection of utility functions with respect to which no allocation mechanism can guarantee a larger fraction of the fair share. In interesting special cases our allocation mechanism does offer a larger fraction of the fair share.

Keywords: Fairness; Fair share; Bin packing; Random allocations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:87:y:2014:i:c:p:305-321

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2014.02.009

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