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Competitive Division of a Mixed Manna

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Bogomolnaia
  • Hervé Moulin
  • Fedor Sandomirskiy
  • Elena Yanovskaya

Abstract

A mixed manna contains goods (that everyone likes) and bads (that everyone dislikes), as well as items that are goods to some agents, but bads or satiated to others. If all items are goods and utility functions are homogeneous of degree 1 and concave (and monotone), the competitive division maximizes the Nash product of utilities (Gale–Eisenberg): hence it is welfarist (determined by the set of feasible utility profiles), unique, continuous, and easy to compute. We show that the competitive division of a mixed manna is still welfarist. If the zero utility profile is Pareto dominated, the competitive profile is strictly positive and still uniquely maximizes the product of utilities. If the zero profile is unfeasible (for instance, if all items are bads), the competitive profiles are strictly negative and are the critical points of the product of disutilities on the efficiency frontier. The latter allows for multiple competitive utility profiles, from which no single‐valued selection can be continuous or resource monotonic. Thus the implementation of competitive fairness under linear preferences in interactive platforms like SPLIDDIT will be more difficult when the manna contains bads that overwhelm the goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Bogomolnaia & Hervé Moulin & Fedor Sandomirskiy & Elena Yanovskaya, 2017. "Competitive Division of a Mixed Manna," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1847-1871, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:emetrp:v:85:y:2017:i:6:p:1847-1871
    DOI: 10.3982/ECTA14564
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    Cited by:

    1. Mariotti, Marco & Wen, Quan, 2021. "A noncooperative foundation of the competitive divisions for bads," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    2. Erel Segal-Halevi & Warut Suksompong, 2023. "Cutting a Cake Fairly for Groups Revisited," Papers 2301.09061, arXiv.org.
    3. Anna Bogomolnaia & Hervé Moulin & Fedor Sandomirskiy & Elena Yanovskaia, 2019. "Dividing bads under additive utilities," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 52(3), pages 395-417, March.
    4. Kondratev, Aleksei Y. & Nesterov, Alexander S., 2022. "Minimal envy and popular matchings," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 296(3), pages 776-787.
    5. Miralles, Antonio & Pycia, Marek, 2021. "Foundations of pseudomarkets: Walrasian equilibria for discrete resources," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    6. Dall’Aglio, Marco, 2023. "Fair division of goods in the shadow of market values," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 785-801.
    7. Ortega, Josué, 2020. "Multi-unit assignment under dichotomous preferences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 15-24.
    8. Bade, Sophie & Segal-Halevi, Erel, 2023. "Fairness for multi-self agents," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 321-336.
    9. Anna Bogomolnaia & Hervé Moulin, 2023. "Guarantees in Fair Division: General or Monotone Preferences," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(1), pages 160-176, February.
    10. Fedor Sandomirskiy & Erel Segal-Halevi, 2019. "Efficient Fair Division with Minimal Sharing," Papers 1908.01669, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    11. Samuel Bismuth & Ivan Bliznets & Erel Segal-Halevi, 2019. "Fair Division with Bounded Sharing: Binary and Non-Degenerate Valuations," Papers 1912.00459, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.
    12. Van Essen, Matt & Wooders, John, 2021. "Allocating positions fairly: Auctions and Shapley value," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    13. Anna Bogomolnaia & Hervé Moulin & Fedor Sandomirskiy, 2022. "On the Fair Division of a Random Object," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1174-1194, February.
    14. Erel Segal-Halevi & Shmuel Nitzan, 2019. "Fair cake-cutting among families," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(4), pages 709-740, December.
    15. Chambers, Christopher P. & Hayashi, Takashi, 2023. "The structure of representative preference," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    16. Anna Bogomolnaia & Herv'e Moulin, 2024. "Guaranteed shares of benefits and costs," Papers 2406.14198, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.
    17. Sandomirskiy, Fedor & Ushchev, Philip, 2024. "The geometry of consumer preference aggregation," CEPR Discussion Papers 19100, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Soroush Ebadian & Dominik Peters & Nisarg Shah, 2022. "How to Fairly Allocate Easy and Difficult Chores," Post-Print hal-03834514, HAL.
    19. Hao Guo & Weidong Li & Bin Deng, 2023. "A Survey on Fair Allocation of Chores," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-28, August.
    20. Jugal Garg & Yixin Tao & L'aszl'o A. V'egh, 2025. "Tight Efficiency Bounds for the Probabilistic Serial Mechanism under Cardinal Preferences," Papers 2507.03359, arXiv.org.
    21. 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.
    22. Simina Br^anzei & Fedor Sandomirskiy, 2019. "Algorithms for Competitive Division of Chores," Papers 1907.01766, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    23. Igarashi, Ayumi & Kawase, Yasushi & Suksompong, Warut & Sumita, Hanna, 2024. "Fair division with two-sided preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 268-287.
    24. Marco Dall'Aglio & Camilla Di Luca & Lucia Milone, 2017. "Finding the Pareto optimal equitable allocation of homogeneous divisible goods among three players," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 27(3), pages 35-50.
    25. Vittorio Bil`o & Ioannis Caragiannis & Michele Flammini & Ayumi Igarashi & Gianpiero Monaco & Dominik Peters & Cosimo Vinci & William S. Zwicker, 2018. "Almost Envy-Free Allocations with Connected Bundles," Papers 1808.09406, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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