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Balanced allocation methods for claims problems with indivisibilities

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Abstract

We study claims problems in which a certain amount of indivisible units (of an homogeneous good) has to be distributed among a group of agents, when this amount is not enough to fully satisfy agents’ demands. Our aim is to find solutions fulfilling procedural and fairness properties. To do that, we define the M-down methods, which are the unique robust (composition down and consistency) and fair (balancedness and conditional full compensation) rules. Besides, we also establish the relationship between these M-down methods and the constrained equal awards rule.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico and Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, University of Alicante, 03080, Alicante, Spain

    Carmen Herrero

  2. Department of Economics, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Ricardo Martínez

  3. Department of Economics, Pablo de Olavide University, 41013, Sevilla, Spain

    Ricardo Martínez

Authors
  1. Carmen Herrero
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  2. Ricardo Martínez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ricardo Martínez.

Additional information

We are very grateful to José Alcalde, François Maniquet, Marco Mariotti, Jordi Massó, Juan D. Moreno-Ternero, William Thomson, and Antonio Villar for their stimulating comments. The participants at the workshop chaired by François Maniquet at CORE also provided interesting suggestions. Two anonymous referees and an editor helped on significantly improving the paper. The usual disclaimers apply. We acknowledge financial support from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia under projects SEJ2004-08011/ECON and SEJ2007-67734/ECON, and Programa de Becas Postdoctorales MEC/Fulbright, the Junta de Andalucí a under projects SEJ1252, the Generalitat Valenciana under project GV06/275, the Vicerrectorado de Investigación de la Universidad de Alicante, and the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas.

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Herrero, C., Martínez, R. Balanced allocation methods for claims problems with indivisibilities. Soc Choice Welfare 30, 603–617 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-007-0262-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-007-0262-z

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