Constrained Fair and Efficient Allocations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Cookson, Benjamin, Ebadian, Soroush, Shah, Nisarg
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Cookson, Benjamin
Ebadian, Soroush
Shah, Nisarg
author_facet Cookson, Benjamin
Ebadian, Soroush
Shah, Nisarg
contents Fairness and efficiency have become the pillars of modern fair division research, but prior work on achieving both simultaneously is largely limited to the unconstrained setting. We study fair and efficient allocations of indivisible goods under additive valuations and various types of allocation feasibility constraints, and demonstrate the unreasonable effectiveness of the maximum Nash welfare (MNW) solution in this previously uncharted territory. Our main result is that MNW allocations are 1/2-envy-free up to one good (EF1) and Pareto optimal under the broad family of (arbitrary) matroid constraints. We extend these guarantees to complete MNW allocations for base-orderable matroid constraints, and to a family of non-matroidal constraints (which includes balancedness) using a novel "alternate worlds" technique. We establish tightness of our results by providing counterexamples for the satisfiability of certain stronger desiderata, but show an improved result for the special case of goods with copies (Gafni et al. 2023). Finally, we also establish novel best-of-both-worlds guarantees for goods with copies and balancedness.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_00133
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Constrained Fair and Efficient Allocations
Cookson, Benjamin
Ebadian, Soroush
Shah, Nisarg
Computer Science and Game Theory
Fairness and efficiency have become the pillars of modern fair division research, but prior work on achieving both simultaneously is largely limited to the unconstrained setting. We study fair and efficient allocations of indivisible goods under additive valuations and various types of allocation feasibility constraints, and demonstrate the unreasonable effectiveness of the maximum Nash welfare (MNW) solution in this previously uncharted territory. Our main result is that MNW allocations are 1/2-envy-free up to one good (EF1) and Pareto optimal under the broad family of (arbitrary) matroid constraints. We extend these guarantees to complete MNW allocations for base-orderable matroid constraints, and to a family of non-matroidal constraints (which includes balancedness) using a novel "alternate worlds" technique. We establish tightness of our results by providing counterexamples for the satisfiability of certain stronger desiderata, but show an improved result for the special case of goods with copies (Gafni et al. 2023). Finally, we also establish novel best-of-both-worlds guarantees for goods with copies and balancedness.
title Constrained Fair and Efficient Allocations
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00133