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arXiv 2510.13633cs.GT
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在线公平分配与补贴:无嫉妒分配何时存在,代价几何?

Online Fair Division With Subsidy: When Do Envy-Free Allocations Exist, and at What Cost?

Pooja Kulkarni, Ruta Mehta, Vishnu V. Narayan, Tomasz Ponitka

AI总结:

本文研究在线不可分割物品公平分配中的无嫉妒性与补贴问题,证明在次模或超模估值下无法在线保持无嫉妒性,但为加性等估值类设计算法,并揭示最小补贴可达Ω(mn),同时为特定估值类给出紧界。

摘要:

我们研究在$n$个(离线)智能体之间公平分配$m$个在线到达的不可分割物品的问题。尽管无嫉妒性已成为典型的公平概念,但在不可分割物品下,无嫉妒(EF)分配不一定存在。为绕过这一障碍,一条重要的研究路线表明,通过允许补贴,存在可以变得无嫉妒的分配。离线环境中的大量工作集中于寻找具有有界补贴的无嫉妒可分配。我们将这一文献扩展到在线环境,其中物品逐个到达,且必须立即且不可撤销地分配。我们的贡献有两方面:\n1. 在线维持无嫉妒性:我们表明,当估值是次模或超模时,即使具有二元边际,无嫉妒性也不能总是被在线保持。相比之下,我们为加性估值类及其超类(包括$k$-需求估值和SPLC估值)设计了在线算法,在每一步都维持无嫉妒性。\n2. 确保低补贴:我们研究了保证在线无嫉妒性所需的补贴数量。令人惊讶的是,即使对于加性估值,最小补贴也可能高达$\Omega(mn)$,这与离线环境中的$O(n)$界限形成对比。在积极方面,我们确定了最小补贴较小的估值类(即不依赖于$m$),包括$k$-值、秩一、受限加性和相同估值,并为这些类获得了(大部分)紧的补贴界限。

英文摘要:

We study the problem of fairly allocating $m$ indivisible items arriving online, among $n$ (offline) agents. Although envy-freeness has emerged as the archetypal fairness notion, envy-free (EF) allocations need not exist with indivisible items. To bypass this, a prominent line of research demonstrates that there exist allocations that can be made envy-free by allowing a subsidy. Extensive work in the offline setting has focused on finding such envy-freeable allocations with bounded subsidy. We extend this literature to an online setting where items arrive one at a time and must be immediately and irrevocably allocated. Our contributions are two-fold: 1. Maintaining EF Online: We show that envy-freeability cannot always be preserved online when the valuations are submodular or supermodular, even with binary marginals. In contrast, we design online algorithms that maintain envy-freeability at every step for the class of additive valuations, and for its superclasses including $k$-demand and SPLC valuations. 2. Ensuring Low Subsidy: We investigate the quantity of subsidy required to guarantee envy-freeness online. Surprisingly, even for additive valuations, the minimum subsidy may be as large as $Ω(mn)$, in contrast to the offline setting, where the bound is $O(n)$. On the positive side, we identify valuation classes where the minimum subsidy is small (i.e., does not depend on $m$), including $k$-valued, rank-one, restricted additive, and identical valuations, and we obtain (mostly) tight subsidy bounds for these classes.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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