Characterizing Maximum Nash Welfare: Envy-Freeness and Proportionality

Abstract

When allocating indivisible goods, the maximum Nash welfare rule is known to be the unique welfarist rule satisfying envy-freeness up to one good. We strengthen this characterization by showing that envy-freeness up to one good can be replaced by substantially weaker fairness requirements: envy-freeness up to $k$ goods or proportionality up to $k$ goods, for any fixed $k$. Our characterization holds even for profiles with identical goods.

References in corpus (4)

• Almost Envy-Freeness for Groups: Improved Bounds via Discrepancy Theory
• A Characterization of Maximum Nash Welfare for Indivisible Goods
• Extending the Characterization of Maximum Nash Welfare
• On the Fairness of Additive Welfarist Rules