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Externalities and fairness

Seddighin, M ; Sharif University of Technology | 2019

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  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1145/3308558.3313670
  3. Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc , 2019
  4. Abstract:
  5. One of the important yet insufficiently studied subjects in fair allocation is the externality effect among agents. For a resource allocation problem, externalities imply that the share allocated to an agent may affect the utilities of other agents. In this paper, we conduct a study of fair allocation of indivisible goods when the externalities are not negligible. Inspired by the models in the context of network diffusion, we present a simple and natural model, namely network externalities, to capture the externalities. To evaluate fairness in the network externalities model, we generalize the idea behind the notion of maximin-share (MMS) to achieve a new criterion, namely, extended-maximin-share (EMMS). Next, we consider two problems concerning our model. First, we discuss the computational aspects of finding the value of EMMS for every agent. For this, we introduce a generalized form of partitioning problem that includes many famous partitioning problems such as maximin, minimax, and leximin. We further show that a 1/2-approximation algorithm exists for this partitioning problem. Next, we investigate on finding approximately optimal EMMS allocations, i.e., allocations that guarantee each agent a utility of at least a fraction of his extended-maximin-share. We show that under a natural assumption that the agents are α-self-reliant, an α/2-EMMS allocation always exists. The combination of this with the former result yields a polynomial-time α/4-EMMS allocation algorithm
  6. Keywords:
  7. Approximation ; Externalities ; Fairness ; Maximin-share ; Networks ; Networks (circuits) ; Polynomial approximation ; World Wide Web ; Allocation algorithm ; Computational aspects ; Maximin ; Partitioning problem ; Resource allocation problem ; Economics
  8. Source: 2019 World Wide Web Conference, WWW 2019, 13 May 2019 through 17 May 2019 ; 2019 , Pages 538-548 ; 9781450366748 (ISBN)
  9. URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3308558.3313670