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Some neglected axioms in fair division

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Author Info
John W. Pratt () (Harvard Business School)
Abstract

Conditions one might impose on fair allocation procedures are introduced. Nondiscrimination requires that agents share an item in proportion to their entitlements if they receive nothing else. The "price" procedures of Pratt (2007), including the Nash bargaining procedure, satisfy this. Other prominent efficient procedures do not. In two-agent problems, reducing the feasible set between the solution and one agent's maximum point increases the utility cost to that agent of providing any given utility gain to the other and is equivalent to decreasing the dispersion of the latter's values for the items he does not receive without changing their total. One-agent monotonnicity requires that such a change should not hurt the first agent, limited monotonicity that the solution should not change. For prices, the former implies convexity in the smaller of the two valuations, the latter linearity. In either case, the price is at least their average and hence spiteful.

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Paper provided by Harvard Business School in its series Harvard Business School Working Papers with number 08-094.

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Length: 9 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2008
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Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:08-094

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Related research
Keywords: Fair division; efficient allocation; nondiscrimination axiom; monotonicity axioms; envy-free; spite; bargaining solutions.;

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  1. Machina, Mark J & Pratt, John W, 1997. "Increasing Risk: Some Direct Constructions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 103-27, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Kalai, Ehud & Smorodinsky, Meir, 1975. "Other Solutions to Nash's Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(3), pages 513-18, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. John Pratt, 2007. "Fair (and not so fair) division," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 203-236, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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