Assigning agents to a line

Jens Hougaard (), Juan Moreno-Ternero and Lars P. Osterdal
Additional contact information
Lars P. Osterdal: University of Southern Denmark

No 2013015, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: We consider the problem of assigning agents to slots on a line, where only one agent can be served at a slot and each agent prefers to be served as close as possible to his target. Our focus is on utilitarian methods, i.e., those that minimize the total gap between targets and assigned slots. We first consider deterministic assignment of agents to slots, and provide a direct method for testing if a given deterministic assignment is utilitarian. We then consider probabilistic assignment of agents to slots, and make use of the previous method to propose a utilitarian modification of the classic random priority method to solve this class of problems. We also provide some logical relations in our setting among standard axioms in the literature on assignment problems.

Keywords: probabilistic assignment; random priority; utilitarianism; sd-efficiency; bottleneck (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D61 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-05-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Assigning agents to a line (2014)
Working Paper: Assigning agents to a line (2014)
Working Paper: Assigning agents to a line (2014)
Working Paper: Assigning agents to a line (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2013015

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