Tight Efficiency Bounds for the Probabilistic Serial Mechanism under Cardinal Preferences

Jugal Garg, Yixin Tao and L\'aszl\'o A. V\'egh

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Abstract: The Probabilistic Serial (PS) mechanism -- also known as the simultaneous eating algorithm -- is a canonical solution for the assignment problem under ordinal preferences. It guarantees envy-freeness and ordinal efficiency in the resulting random assignment. However, under cardinal preferences, its efficiency may degrade significantly: it is known that PS may yield allocations that are $\Omega(\ln{n})$-worse than Pareto optimal, but whether this bound is tight remained an open question. Our first result resolves this question by showing that the PS mechanism guarantees $(\ln(n)+2)$-approximate Pareto efficiency, even in the more general submodular setting introduced by Fujishige, Sano, and Zhan (ACM TEAC 2018). This is established by showing that, although the PS mechanism may incur a loss of up to $O(\sqrt{n})$ in utilitarian social welfare, it still achieves a $(\ln{n}+2)$-approximation to the maximum Nash welfare. In addition, we present a polynomial-time algorithm that computes an allocation which is envy-free and $e^{1/e}$-approximately Pareto-efficient, answering an open question posed by Tr\"obst and Vazirani (EC 2024). The PS mechanism also applies to the allocation of chores instead of goods. We prove that it guarantees an $n$-approximately Pareto-efficient allocation in this setting, and that this bound is asymptotically tight. This result provides the first known approximation guarantee for computing a fair and efficient allocation in the assignment problem with chores under cardinal preferences.

Date: 2025-07
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