Uniform externalities: Two axioms for fair allocation

doi:10.1016/0047-2727(90)90003-Z

Journal of Public Economics

Volume 43, Issue 3, December 1990, Pages 305-326

https://doi.org/10.1016/0047-2727(90)90003-Z Get rights and content

Abstract

Positive (resp. negative) Preference Externalities say that an agent always prefers his actual welfare to his (virtual) welfare should other agents share his preferences (resp. prefers his virtual to his actual welfare). Negative Group Externalities say that an agent never prefers his actual welfare to his (virtual) welfare should he be the sole user of the resources.

These two axioms unify several familiar fairness properties - and yield some new ideas as well - in the division of unproduced commodities and the cooperative production of a private or a public good. We also discuss their compatibility with No Envy and Resource Monotonicity.

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Regarding the relaxations of envy-freeness, Image 3 was defined by Budish [12], but it was also implicit in the work of Lipton et al. [27]. Budish also defined the notion of maximin shares, based on concepts by Moulin [29]. Later on, Caragiannis et al. [14] introduced the notions of Image 1 and Image 4, and even more recently, Barman et al. [8] proposed to study Image 2 allocations.
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^∗: Research supported by NSF Grant SES8618600 and by the grant PB86-0613 from the Direction General de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica, Spanish Ministry of Education. Stimulating discussions with J. Cremer, and W. Thomson are acknowledged. Special thanks to J. Roemer and to an anonymous referee for their criticisms.

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Uniform externalities: Two axioms for fair allocation

Abstract

Journal of Mathematical Economics

Journal of Economic Theory

Journal of Public Economics

Fair allocation of indivisible goods and money

Econometrica

The solidarity axiom for quasilinear social choice problems

Social Choice and Welfare

Self-ownership, world ownership and equality

Social Philosophy and Policy

How to cut a cake fairly

American Mathematical Monthly

What is equality? Part 2: Equality of resources

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Resource allocation and the public sector

Yale Economic Essays

The ratio equilibrium and a voting game in a public good economy

Journal of Economic Theory

On the fair allocation of indivisible goods

Notes on welfare economics, information and uncertainty

Egalitarian equivalent cost-sharing of a public good

Econometrica

Monotonic surplus sharing, and the utilisation of common property resources

Proceedings of the Conference on Game Theory and Applications, Columbus, Ohio, 1987

Welfare bounds in the fair division problem

Journal of Economic Theory