Subsidised Proportionality in Fair Allocation

The Price of a Fair Share Imagine dividing a limited set of resources among a group of people. When the items cannot be split, even a carefully chosen allocation may leave someone feeling shortchanged. One practical response is to offer compensation, but then a new question arises: how much money is enough? This paper develops ways to make such allocations fair while keeping the total compensation as small as possible. It identifies the exact worst-case cost when everyone has the same claim and provides strong guarantees when claims differ. The approach works for both desirable resources and burdensome tasks. The findings appear in the forthcoming Operations Research paper, “Subsidised Proportionality in Fair Allocation,” by Xiaowei Wu, Cong Zhang, and Shengwei Zhou.