We study the problem of fairly and efficiently allocating indivisible chores among agents with additive disutility functions. We consider the widely-used envy-based fairness properties of EF1 and EFX, in conjunction with the efficiency property of fractional Pareto-optimality (fPO). Existence (and computation) of an allocation that is simultaneously EF1/EFX and fPO are challenging open problems, and we make progress on both of them. We show existence of an allocation that is
- EF1+fPO, when there are three agents,
- EF1+fPO, when there are at most two disutility functions,
- EFX+fPO, for three agents with bivalued disutilities. These results are constructive, based on strongly polynomial-time algorithms. We also investigate non-existence and show that an allocation that is EFX+fPO need not exist, even for two agents.
Almost (Weighted) Proportional Allocations for Indivisible Chores
在本文中,我们研究如何公平地分配m个不可分割的家务n(不对称)代理。我们认为(加权)比例的任何项目(PROPX),并表明(加权)PROPX分配总是存在的,可以有效地计算。对于家务,我们认为PROPX可能是一种更可靠的比例松弛,因为任何PROPX分配都可以确保对称代理的最大最小份额(MMS)公平性[Budish,2011]和不对称代理的任何价格份额(APS)公平性[Babaioff et al,2021]的2-近似。APS分配家务还没有被研究之前,目前的工作,我们的结果意味着一个2-近似算法。另一个副产品的结果是,一个EFX和一个加权EF 1分配不可分割的家务存在,如果所有的代理人有相同的顺序偏好,这可能是独立的利益。然后,我们考虑部分信息设置和设计算法,只使用代理的顺序偏好来计算近似PROPX分配。我们的算法实现了2-近似对称和非对称代理,和近似比是最佳的。最后,我们研究了公平价格(PoF),即,通过强制按(加权)PROPX分配而造成的社会福利损失。我们证明了PoF的紧比是Theta(n)的对称代理和无界的不对称代理。
We study how to fairly allocate a set of indivisible chores to a group of agents, where each agent $i$ has a non-negative weight $w_i$ that represents its obligation for undertaking the chores. We consider the fairness notion of weighted envy-freeness up to one item (WEF1) and propose an efficient picking sequence algorithm for computing WEF1 allocations. Our analysis is based on a natural and powerful continuous interpretation for the picking sequence algorithms in the weighted setting, which might be of independent interest. Using this interpretation, we establish the necessary and sufficien…
Non-Existence of EFX Chore Allocations for Monotone Cost Functions with Binary Marginals
University of Macau(澳门大学);Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen(哈尔滨工业大学(深圳));Shanghai Jiao Tong University(上海交通大学);Nanyang Technological University(南洋理工大学)
Comparison-Based Fair Division of Indivisible Chores
University of Macau(澳门大学);Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen(哈尔滨工业大学(深圳));Shanghai Jiao Tong University(上海交通大学);Nanyang Technological University(南洋理工大学)
We study the problem of dividing indivisible chores among agents whose costs (for the chores) are supermodular set functions with binary marginals. Such functions capture complementarity among chores, i.e., they constitute an expressive class wherein the marginal disutility of each chore is either one or zero, and the marginals increase with respect to supersets. In this setting, we study the broad landscape of finding fair and efficient chore allocations. In particular, we establish the existence of $(i)$ EF1 and Pareto efficient chore allocations, $(ii)$ MMS-fair and Pareto efficient allocat…
We study the problem of allocating indivisible chores among agents with binary supermodular cost functions. In other words, each chore has a marginal cost of $0$ or $1$ and chores exhibit increasing marginal costs (or decreasing marginal utilities). In this note, we combine the techniques of Viswanathan and Zick (2022) and Barman et al. (2023) to present a general framework for fair allocation with this class of valuation functions. Our framework allows us to generalize the results of Barman et al. (2023) and efficiently compute allocations which satisfy weighted notions of fairness like weigh…
We study the problem of allocating a set of indivisible chores to three agents, among whom two have additive cost functions, in a fair manner. Two fairness notions under consideration are envy-freeness up to any chore (EFX) and a relaxed notion, namely envy-freeness up to transferring any chore (tEFX). In contrast to the case of goods, the case of chores remain relatively unexplored. In particular, our results constructively prove the existence of a tEFX allocation for three agents if two of them have additive cost functions and the ratio of their highest and lowest costs is bounded by two. In…
We study a fair allocation problem of indivisible items under additive externalities in which each agent also receives values from items that are assigned to other agents. We propose several new fairness concepts. We extend the well-studied envy-freeness up to one item (EF1) and envy-freeness up to any item (EFX) to this setting, and we propose a new fairness concept called general fair share (GFS). We undertake a detailed study and present algorithms for finding fair allocations.