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Publications
Publications
  • 2007
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

Fair (and Not So Fair) Division

By: John W. Pratt
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:28
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Abstract

Drawbacks of existing procedures are illustrated and a method of efficient fair division is proposed that avoids them. Given additive participants' utilities, each item is priced at the geometric mean (or some other function) of its two highest valuations. The utilities are scaled so that the market clears with the participants' purchases proportional to their entitlements. The method is generalized to arbitrary bargaining sets and existence is proved. For two or three participants, the expected utilities are unique. For more, under additivity, the geometric mean separates the prices where uniqueness holds and where it fails; it holds for the geometric mean except in one case where refinement is needed

Keywords

Fairness; Price

Citation

Pratt, John W. "Fair (and Not So Fair) Division." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 08-016, September 2007.
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About The Author

John W. Pratt

→More Publications

More from the Author

    • 2008
    • Faculty Research

    Some Neglected Axioms in Fair Division

    By: John W. Pratt
    • 2008
    • Faculty Research

    Introduction to Statistical Decision Theory

    By: John W. Pratt, Howard Raiffa and Robert Schlaifer
    • December 2007
    • Journal of Risk and Uncertainty

    Fair (and Not So Fair) Division

    By: John W. Pratt
More from the Author
  • Some Neglected Axioms in Fair Division By: John W. Pratt
  • Introduction to Statistical Decision Theory By: John W. Pratt, Howard Raiffa and Robert Schlaifer
  • Fair (and Not So Fair) Division By: John W. Pratt
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