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Refinements of the no-envy solution in economies with indivisible goods

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Abstract

We consider the problem of fair allocation in economies with indivisible goods. Our primary concept is that of an envy-free allocation, that is, an allocation such that no agent would prefer anyone else's bundle to his own. Since there typically is a large set (a continuum) of such allocations, the need arises to identify well-behaved selections from the no-envy solution. First we establish the non-existence of ‘population monotonic’ selections. Then we propose a variety of selections motivated by intuitive considerations of fairness.

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Tadenuma, K., Thomson, W. Refinements of the no-envy solution in economies with indivisible goods. Theor Decis 39, 189–206 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01078984

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