IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2607.18139.html

1-out-of-5 Maximin-Share Allocations Always Exist for Four Agents

Author

Listed:
  • Christoph Schwerdtfeger

Abstract

For four agents with nonnegative additive valuations, a complete 1-out-of-5 maximin-share allocation always exists, improving the previous 1-out-of-6 guarantee. Together with known exact-MMS counterexamples, this completely characterizes the four-agent case: the guarantee holds exactly for $d\geq5$. The main technical contribution is a balanced-residual partition lemma: removing rejected bundles with one of the four highest-ranked goods apiece leaves a remainder that still admits the required number of unit-valued balanced bundles. In its central $2+2$ case, three unit bundles repair two pairs of colliding high-valued goods. The theorem is machine-checked in Lean 4.

Suggested Citation

  • Christoph Schwerdtfeger, 2026. "1-out-of-5 Maximin-Share Allocations Always Exist for Four Agents," Papers 2607.18139, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2607.18139
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.18139
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2607.18139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.