Approximating One-Sided and Two-Sided Nash Social Welfare With Capacities

TL;DR

This paper develops approximation algorithms for maximizing Nash social welfare with capacity constraints in one-sided and two-sided models, providing the first constant-factor algorithms for some cases and improving existing bounds.

Contribution

It introduces the first constant-factor approximation for one-sided Nash welfare with submodular valuations and capacities, and improves approximation bounds for two-sided cases with subadditive valuations.

Findings

A (6+ε)-approximation for one-sided submodular valuations.

A 1.33-approximation for two-sided subadditive valuations.

Modified LP approach yields (e^{1/e}+ε)-approximation for additive valuations.

Abstract

We study the problem of maximizing Nash social welfare, which is the geometric mean of agents' utilities, in two well-known models. The first model involves one-sided preferences, where a set of indivisible items is allocated among a group of agents (commonly studied in fair division). The second model deals with two-sided preferences, where a set of workers and firms, each having numerical valuations for the other side, are matched with each other (commonly studied in matching-under-preferences literature). We study these models under capacity constraints, which restrict the number of items (respectively, workers) that an agent (respectively, a firm) can receive. We develop constant-factor approximation algorithms for both problems under a broad class of valuations. Specifically, our main results are the following: (a) For any $\epsilon > 0$, a $(6+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm for the one-sided problem when agents have submodular valuations, and (b) a $1.33$-approximation algorithm for the two-sided problem when the firms have subadditive valuations. The former result provides the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for Nash welfare in the one-sided problem with submodular valuations and capacities, while the latter result improves upon an existing $\sqrt{OPT}$-approximation algorithm for additive valuations. Our result for the two-sided setting also establishes a computational separation between the Nash and utilitarian welfare objectives. We also complement our algorithms with hardness-of-approximation results. Additionally, for the case of additive valuations, we modify the configuration LP of Feng and Li [ICALP 2024] to obtain an $(e^{1/e}+\epsilon)-$ approximation algorithm for weighted two-sided Nash social welfare under capacity constraints.