IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/mateco/v50y2014icp283-289.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A note on object allocation under lexicographic preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Saban, Daniela
  • Sethuraman, Jay

Abstract

We consider the problem of allocating m objects to n agents. Each agent has unit demand, and has strict preferences over the objects. There are qj units of object j available and the problem is balanced in the sense that ∑jqj=n. An allocation specifies the amount of each object j that is assigned to each agent i, when the objects are divisible; when the objects are indivisible and exactly one unit of each object is available, an allocation is interpreted as the probability that agent i is assigned one unit of object j. In our setting, agent preferences over objects are extended to preferences over allocations using the natural lexicographic order. The goal is to design mechanisms that are efficient, envy-free, and strategy-proof. Schulman and Vazirani show that an adaptation of the probabilistic serial mechanism satisfies all these properties when qj≥1 for all objects j. Our first main result is a characterization of problems for which efficiency, envy-freeness, and strategy-proofness are compatible. Furthermore, we show that these three properties do not characterize the serial mechanism. Finally, we show that when indifferences between objects are permitted in agent preferences, it is impossible to satisfy all three properties even in the standard setting of “house” allocation in which all object supplies are 1.

Suggested Citation

  • Saban, Daniela & Sethuraman, Jay, 2014. "A note on object allocation under lexicographic preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 283-289.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:mateco:v:50:y:2014:i:c:p:283-289
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmateco.2013.12.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304406813001195
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmateco.2013.12.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Katta, Akshay-Kumar & Sethuraman, Jay, 2006. "A solution to the random assignment problem on the full preference domain," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 231-250, November.
    2. Tayfun Sönmez & M. Utku Ünver, 2009. "Matching, Allocation, and Exchange of Discrete Resources," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 717, Boston College Department of Economics.
    3. Bogomolnaia, Anna & Heo, Eun Jeong, 2012. "Probabilistic assignment of objects: Characterizing the serial rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 2072-2082.
    4. Bogomolnaia, Anna & Moulin, Herve, 2001. "A New Solution to the Random Assignment Problem," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 295-328, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eirinakis, Pavlos & Mourtos, Ioannis & Zampou, Eleni, 2022. "Random Serial Dictatorship for horizontal collaboration in logistics," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    2. Katarina Cechlarova & Bettina Klaus & David F.Manlove, 2018. "Pareto optimal matchings of students to courses in the presence of prerequisites," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 16.04, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    3. Alva, Samson & Manjunath, Vikram, 2020. "The impossibility of strategy-proof, Pareto efficient, and individually rational rules for fractional matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 15-29.
    4. Wonki Jo Cho, 2018. "Probabilistic assignment: an extension approach," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(1), pages 137-162, June.
    5. Cho, Wonki Jo, 2016. "Incentive properties for ordinal mechanisms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 168-177.
    6. Cho, Wonki Jo, 2016. "When is the probabilistic serial assignment uniquely efficient and envy-free?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 14-25.
    7. Honda, Edward, 2021. "A modified deferred acceptance algorithm for conditionally lexicographic-substitutable preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    8. Hadi Hosseini & Sujoy Sikdar & Rohit Vaish & Lirong Xia, 2022. "Fairly Dividing Mixtures of Goods and Chores under Lexicographic Preferences," Papers 2203.07279, arXiv.org.
    9. Cho, Wonki Jo & Doğan, Battal, 2016. "Equivalence of efficiency notions for ordinal assignment problems," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 8-12.
    10. Andrew McLennan & Shino Takayama & Yuki Tamura, 2024. "An Efficient, Computationally Tractable School Choice Mechanism," Discussion Papers Series 668, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bogomolnaia, Anna & Moulin, Herve, 2015. "Size versus fairness in the assignment problem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 119-127.
    2. Hougaard, Jens Leth & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2014. "Assigning agents to a line," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 539-553.
    3. Youngsub Chun & Boram Park, 2017. "A graph theoretic approach to the slot allocation problem," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 48(1), pages 133-152, January.
    4. Chang, Hee-In & Chun, Youngsub, 2017. "Probabilistic assignment of indivisible objects when agents have the same preferences except the ordinal ranking of one object," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 80-92.
    5. Andrew McLennan & Shino Takayama & Yuki Tamura, 2024. "An Efficient, Computationally Tractable School Choice Mechanism," Discussion Papers Series 668, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    6. Basteck, Christian & Ehlers, Lars H., 2022. "Strategy-proof and envy-free random assignment," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2022-208, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    7. Bogomolnaia, Anna, 2015. "Random assignment: Redefining the serial rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PA), pages 308-318.
    8. Anna Bogomolnaia, 2015. "The Most Ordinally-Efficient of Random Voting Rules," HSE Working papers WP BRP 106/EC/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    9. Eun Heo, 2014. "The extended serial correspondence on a rich preference domain," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(2), pages 439-454, May.
    10. Basteck, Christian & Ehlers, Lars, 2021. "Strategy-Proof and Envy-Free Random Assignment," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 307, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    11. Harless, Patrick, 2019. "Efficient rules for probabilistic assignment," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 107-116.
    12. Yajing Chen & Patrick Harless & Zhenhua Jiao, 2021. "The probabilistic rank random assignment rule and its axiomatic characterization," Papers 2104.09165, arXiv.org.
    13. Sulagna Dasgupta & Debasis Mishra, 2020. "Ordinal Bayesian incentive compatibility in random assignment model," Papers 2009.13104, arXiv.org, revised May 2021.
    14. Balbuzanov, Ivan, 2020. "Short trading cycles: Paired kidney exchange with strict ordinal preferences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 78-87.
    15. Basteck, Christian & Ehlers, Lars, 2023. "Strategy-proof and envy-free random assignment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    16. Sulagna Dasgupta & Debasis Mishra, 2022. "Ordinal Bayesian incentive compatibility in random assignment model," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 26(4), pages 651-664, December.
    17. Balbuzanov, Ivan, 2022. "Constrained random matching," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    18. Cho, Wonki Jo, 2016. "When is the probabilistic serial assignment uniquely efficient and envy-free?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 14-25.
    19. Heo, Eun Jeong & Yılmaz, Özgür, 2015. "A characterization of the extended serial correspondence," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 102-110.
    20. Hashimoto, Tadashi & Hirata, Daisuke & Kesten, Onur & Kurino, Morimitsu & Unver, Utku, 2014. "Two axiomatic approaches to the probabilistic serial mechanism," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(1), January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:mateco:v:50:y:2014:i:c:p:283-289. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jmateco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.