English

Fair allocation of a multiset of indivisible items

Computer Science and Game Theory 2023-03-30 v5 Theoretical Economics

Abstract

We study the problem of fairly allocating a multiset MM of mm indivisible items among nn agents with additive valuations. Specifically, we introduce a parameter tt for the number of distinct types of items and study fair allocations of multisets that contain only items of these tt types, under two standard notions of fairness: 1. Envy-freeness (EF): For arbitrary nn, tt, we show that a complete EF allocation exists when at least one agent has a unique valuation and the number of items of each type exceeds a particular finite threshold. We give explicit upper and lower bounds on this threshold in some special cases. 2. Envy-freeness up to any good (EFX): For arbitrary nn, mm, and for t2t\le 2, we show that a complete EFX allocation always exists. We give two different proofs of this result. One proof is constructive and runs in polynomial time; the other is geometrically inspired.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.05186,
  title  = {Fair allocation of a multiset of indivisible items},
  author = {Pranay Gorantla and Kunal Marwaha and Santhoshini Velusamy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.05186},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

34 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, 1 algorithm