Fairness and efficiency in cake-cutting with single-peaked preferences

Authors

Bhavook Bhardwaj, Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi Centre)
Rajnish Kumar, Queen's Management School
Josué Ortega, Queen's Management School

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Economics Letters

Abstract

We study the cake-cutting problem where agents have single-peaked preferences over the cake. We show that a recently proposed mechanism by Wang and Wu (2019) to obtain envy-free allocations can yield large welfare losses. Using a simplifying assumption, we characterize all Pareto optimal allocations, which have a simple structure: are peak-preserving and non-wasteful. Finally, we provide simple alternative mechanisms that Pareto dominate that of Wang–Wu and achieve envy-freeness or Pareto optimality.

DOI

10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109064

Publication Date

5-1-2020

Comments

Open Access, Green

Recommended Citation

Bhardwaj, Bhavook; Kumar, Rajnish; and Ortega, Josué, "Fairness and efficiency in cake-cutting with single-peaked preferences" (2020). Journal Articles. 312.
https://digitalcommons.isical.ac.in/journal-articles/312