1-out-of-5 Maximin-Share Allocations Always Exist for Four Agents
Abstract
For four agents with nonnegative additive valuations, a complete 1-out-of-5 maximin-share allocation always exists, improving the previous 1-out-of-6 guarantee. Together with known exact-MMS counterexamples, this completely characterizes the four-agent case: the guarantee holds exactly for . The main technical contribution is a balanced-residual partition lemma: removing rejected bundles with one of the four highest-ranked goods apiece leaves a remainder that still admits the required number of unit-valued balanced bundles. In its central case, three unit bundles repair two pairs of colliding high-valued goods. The theorem is machine-checked in Lean 4.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.18139,
title = {1-out-of-5 Maximin-Share Allocations Always Exist for Four Agents},
author = {Christoph Schwerdtfeger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.18139},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
8 pages. The complete Lean 4 formalization (kernel-checked; axioms: propext, Classical.choice, Quot.sound) is included in the ancillary files