Envy-Free and Efficient Allocations for Graphical Valuations

TL;DR

This paper studies the computational complexity of finding envy-free and EFX allocations in graphical valuation settings, identifying tractable cases and limitations, and analyzing the welfare implications of fair allocations.

Contribution

It characterizes polynomial-time solvability for binary graphical valuations, explores parameterized tractability, and examines the welfare trade-offs of EFX allocations.

Findings

Polynomial-time algorithm for envy-free allocations with binary graphical valuations

Intractability results for more general utility classes {0, 1, d}

Fixed-parameter tractability when parameterized by vertex cover number

Abstract

We consider the complexity of finding envy-free allocations for the class of graphical valuations. Graphical valuations were introduced by Christodoulou et. al.(2023) as a structured class of valuations that admit allocations that are envy-free up to any item (EFX). These are valuations where every item is valued by two agents, lending a (simple) graph structure to the utilities, where the agents are vertices and are adjacent if and only if they value a (unique) common item. Finding envy-free allocations for general valuations is known to be computationally intractable even for very special cases: in particular, even for binary valuations, and even for identical valuations with two agents. We show that, for binary graphical valuations, the existence of envy-free allocations can be determined in polynomial time. In contrast, we also show that allowing for even slightly more general utilities {0, 1, d} leads to intractability even for graphical valuations. This motivates other approaches to tractability, and to that end, we exhibit the fixed-parameter tractability of the problem parameterized by the vertex cover number of the graph when the number of distinct utilities is bounded. We also show that, all graphical instances that admit EF allocations also admit one that is non-wasteful. Since EFX allocations are possibly wasteful, we also address the question of determining the price of fairness of EFX allocations. We show that the price of EFX with respect to utilitarian welfare is one for binary utilities, but can be arbitrarily large {0, 1, d} valuations. We also show the hardness of deciding the existence of an EFX allocation which is also welfare-maximizing and of finding a welfare-maximizing allocation within the set of EFX allocations.