Probing EFX via PMMS: (Non-)Existence Results in Discrete Fair Division

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence of fair allocations under EFX and PMMS criteria, providing new non-existence examples, positive results for special valuation classes, and polynomial algorithms for these cases.

Contribution

It establishes a formal separation between EFX and PMMS, and proves existence of fair allocations for specific valuation classes with efficient algorithms.

Findings

No PMMS allocation exists in a three-agent example with mixed valuations.

EFX allocations exist for personalized bivalued valuations.

PMMS allocations exist for binary-valued MMS-feasible valuations.

Abstract

We study the fair division of indivisible items and provide new insights into the EFX problem, which is widely regarded as the central open question in fair division, and the PMMS problem, a strictly stronger variant of EFX. Our first result constructs a three-agent instance with two monotone valuations and one additive valuation in which no PMMS allocation exists. Since EFX allocations are known to exist under these assumptions, this establishes a formal separation between EFX and PMMS. We prove existence of fair allocations for three important special cases. We show that EFX allocations exist for personalized bivalued valuations, where for each agent $i$ there exist values $a_i > b_i$ such that agent $i$ assigns value $v_i(\{g\}) \in \{a_i, b_i\}$ to each good $g$. We establish an analogous existence result for PMMS allocations when $a_i$ is divisible by $b_i$. We also prove that PMMS allocations exist for binary-valued MMS-feasible valuations, where each bundle $S$ has value $v_i(S) \in \{0, 1\}$. Notably, this result holds even without assuming monotonicity of valuations and thus applies to the fair division of chores and mixed manna. Finally, we study a class of valuations called pair-demand valuations, which extend the well-studied unit-demand valuations to the case where each agent derives value from at most two items, and we show that PMMS allocations exist in this setting. Our proofs are constructive, and we provide polynomial-time algorithms for all three existence results.