Brams on Fair Division
S. J. Brams has posted Fair division. Here is a taste:
- The literature on fair division has burgeoned in recent years, with five academic books (Young, 1994; Brams and Taylor, 1996; Robertson and Webb, 1998; Moulin, 2003; Barbanel, 2004) and one popular book (Brams and Taylor, 1999b) providing overviews. In this review, I will give a brief survey of three different literatures: (i) division of a single heterogeneous good (e.g., a cake with different flavors or toppings);(ii) division, in whole or part, of several divisible goods; and (iii) allocation of several indivisible goods. In each case, I assume the different people, called players, may have different preferences for the items being divided.
For (i) and (ii), I will describe and illustrate procedures for dividing divisible
goods fairly, based on different criteria of fairness. For (iii), I will discuss problems that arise in allocating indivisible goods, illustrating trade-offs that must be made when not all criteria of fairness can be satisfied simultaneously.