Mechanism Design without Money for Fair Allocations

Abstract

Fairness is well studied in the context of resource allocation. Researchers have proposed various fairness notions like envy-freeness (EF), and its relaxations, proportionality and max-min share (MMS). There is vast literature on the existential and computational aspects of such notions. While computing fair allocations, any algorithm assumes agents’ truthful reporting of their valuations towards the resources. Whereas in real-world web-based applications for fair division, the agents involved are strategic and may manipulate for individual utility gain. In this paper, we study strategy-proof mechanisms without monetary transfer, which satisfies the various fairness criteria. We know that for additive valuations, designing truthful mechanisms for EF, MMS and proportionality is impossible. Here we show that there cannot be a truthful mechanism for EFX and the existing algorithms for EF1 are manipulable. We then study the particular case of single-minded agents. For this case, we provide a Serial Dictatorship Mechanism that is strategy-proof and satisfies all the fairness criteria except EF.