Share-Based Fairness for Arbitrary Entitlements

Abstract

We consider the problem of fair allocation of indivisible items to agents that have arbitrary entitlements to the items. Every agent $i$ has a valuation function $v_i$ and an entitlement $b_i$, where entitlements sum up to~1. Which allocation should one choose in situations in which agents fail to agree on one acceptable fairness notion? We study this problem in the case in which each agent focuses on the value she gets, and fairness notions are restricted to be {\em share based}. A {\em share} $s$ is an function that maps every $(v_i,b_i)$ to a value $s(v_i,b_i)$, representing the minimal value $i$ should get, and $s$ is {\em feasible} if it is always possible to give every agent $i$ value of at least $s(v_i,b_i)$. Our main result is that for additive valuations over goods there is an allocation that gives every agent at least half her share value, regardless of which feasible share-based fairness notion the agent wishes to use. Moreover, the ratio of half is best possible. More generally, we provide tight characterizations of what can be achieved, both ex-post (as single allocations) and ex-ante (as expected values of distributions of allocations), both for goods and for chores. We also show that for chores one can achieve the ex-ante and ex-post guarantees simultaneously (a ``best of both world" result), whereas for goods one cannot.