• Media type: E-Book; Report
  • Title: Fairness and efficiency in a random assignment: Three impossibility results
  • Contributor: Nesterov, Alexander S. [Author]
  • imprint: Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), 2014
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: D71 ; strategy-proofness ; weak envy-freeness ; equal division lower bound ; D78 ; ex-post efficiency ; C78 ; random serial dictatorship ; random assignment
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  • Description: This paper considers the problem of allocating N indivisible objects among N agents according to their preferences when transfers are not allowed, and studies the tradeoff between fairness and efficiency in the class of strategy-proof mechanisms. The main finding is that for strategy-proof mechanisms the following efficiency and fairness criteria are mutually incompatible: (1) Ex-post efficiency and envy-freeness, (2) ordinal efficiency and weak envy-freeness and (3) ordinal efficiency and equal division lower bound. Result (1) is the first impossibility result for this setting that uses ex-post efficiency; results (2) and (3) are more relevant for practical implementation than similar results in the literature. In addition, for N = 3 the paper strengthens the characterization result by Bogomolnaia and Moulin (2001): the random serial dictatorship mechanism is the unique strategy-proof, ex-post efficient mechanism that eliminates strict envy between agents with the same preferences.
  • Access State: Open Access