Maximin Fair Allocation of Indivisible Items under Cost Utilities

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Botan, Sirin, Ritossa, Angus, Suzuki, Mashbat, Walsh, Toby
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Botan, Sirin
Ritossa, Angus
Suzuki, Mashbat
Walsh, Toby
author_facet Botan, Sirin
Ritossa, Angus
Suzuki, Mashbat
Walsh, Toby
contents We study the problem of fairly allocating indivisible goods among a set of agents. Our focus is on the existence of allocations that give each agent their maximin fair share--the value they are guaranteed if they divide the goods into as many bundles as there are agents, and receive their lowest valued bundle. An MMS allocation is one where every agent receives at least their maximin fair share. We examine the existence of such allocations when agents have cost utilities. In this setting, each item has an associated cost, and an agent's valuation for an item is the cost of the item if it is useful to them, and zero otherwise. Our main results indicate that cost utilities are a promising restriction for achieving MMS. We show that for the case of three agents with cost utilities, an MMS allocation always exists. We also show that when preferences are restricted slightly further--to what we call laminar set approvals--we can guarantee MMS allocations for any number of agents. Finally, we explore if it is possible to guarantee each agent their maximin fair share while using a strategyproof mechanism.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_13171
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Maximin Fair Allocation of Indivisible Items under Cost Utilities
Botan, Sirin
Ritossa, Angus
Suzuki, Mashbat
Walsh, Toby
Computer Science and Game Theory
We study the problem of fairly allocating indivisible goods among a set of agents. Our focus is on the existence of allocations that give each agent their maximin fair share--the value they are guaranteed if they divide the goods into as many bundles as there are agents, and receive their lowest valued bundle. An MMS allocation is one where every agent receives at least their maximin fair share. We examine the existence of such allocations when agents have cost utilities. In this setting, each item has an associated cost, and an agent's valuation for an item is the cost of the item if it is useful to them, and zero otherwise. Our main results indicate that cost utilities are a promising restriction for achieving MMS. We show that for the case of three agents with cost utilities, an MMS allocation always exists. We also show that when preferences are restricted slightly further--to what we call laminar set approvals--we can guarantee MMS allocations for any number of agents. Finally, we explore if it is possible to guarantee each agent their maximin fair share while using a strategyproof mechanism.
title Maximin Fair Allocation of Indivisible Items under Cost Utilities
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.13171