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Children crying at birthday parties. Why? Fairness and incentives for cake division problems

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Abstract

We consider the problem of dividing a non-homogeneous one- dimensional continuum whose endpoints are topologically identi¯ed. Examples are the division of a birthday cake, the partition of a circular market, the assignment of sentry duty or medical call. We study the existence of rules satisfying various requirements of fairness (no-envy, egalitarian-equivalence; and several requirements having to do with changes in the data of the problem), and that induce agents to reveal their preferences honestly (strategy-proofness).

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  • William Thomson, 2006. "Children crying at birthday parties. Why? Fairness and incentives for cake division problems," RCER Working Papers 526, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    • Handle: RePEc:roc:rocher:526
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    Cited by:

    1. Freeman, Rupert & Pritchard, Geoffrey & Wilson, Mark, 2021. "Order Symmetry: A New Fairness Criterion for Assignment Mechanisms," SocArXiv xt37c, Center for Open Science.
    2. Thomson, William, 2011. "Chapter Twenty-One - Fair Allocation Rules," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 21, pages 393-506, Elsevier.
    3. Segal-Halevi, Erel & Nitzan, Shmuel & Hassidim, Avinatan & Aumann, Yonatan, 2017. "Fair and square: Cake-cutting in two dimensions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 1-28.
    4. Erel Segal-Halevi & Shmuel Nitzan & Avinatan Hassidim & Yonatan Aumann, 2020. "Envy-Free Division of Land," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(3), pages 896-922, August.
    5. Chen, Yiling & Lai, John K. & Parkes, David C. & Procaccia, Ariel D., 2013. "Truth, justice, and cake cutting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 284-297.
    6. Doğan, Battal, 2016. "Nash-implementation of the no-envy solution on symmetric domains of economies," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 165-171.
    7. Zsuzsanna Jank'o & Attila Jo'o & Erel Segal-Halevi & Sheung Man Yuen, 2023. "On Connected Strongly-Proportional Cake-Cutting," Papers 2312.15326, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    8. Sagara, Nobusumi, 2008. "A characterization of [alpha]-maximin solutions of fair division problems," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 273-280, May.
    9. Erel Segal-Halevi & Shmuel Nitzan, 2014. "Cake Cutting – Fair and Square," Working Papers 2014-01, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    10. Xiaotie Deng & Qi Qi & Amin Saberi, 2012. "Algorithmic Solutions for Envy-Free Cake Cutting," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(6), pages 1461-1476, December.
    11. Erel Segal-Halevi & Balázs R. Sziklai, 2019. "Monotonicity and competitive equilibrium in cake-cutting," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(2), pages 363-401, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    cake division; no-envy; strategy-proofness.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

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