Fair division

Fair division is the problem of dividing a set of resources among several people who have an entitlement to them, such that each person receives his/her due share. This problem arises in various real-world settings, such as: division of inheritance, partnership dissolutions, divorce settlements, electronic frequency allocation, airport traffic management, and exploitation of Earth Observation Satellites. This is an active research area in Mathematics, Economics (especially Social choice theory), Game theory, Dispute resolution, and more. The central tenet of fair division is that such a division should be performed by the players themselves, maybe using a mediator but certainly not an arbiter as only the players really know how they value the goods. Fair division is the problem of dividing a set of resources among several people who have an entitlement to them, such that each person receives his/her due share. This problem arises in various real-world settings, such as: division of inheritance, partnership dissolutions, divorce settlements, electronic frequency allocation, airport traffic management, and exploitation of Earth Observation Satellites. This is an active research area in Mathematics, Economics (especially Social choice theory), Game theory, Dispute resolution, and more. The central tenet of fair division is that such a division should be performed by the players themselves, maybe using a mediator but certainly not an arbiter as only the players really know how they value the goods. The archetypal fair division algorithm is Divide and choose. It demonstrates that two agents with different tastes can divide a cake such that each of them believes that he got the best piece. The research in fair division can be seen as an extension of this procedure to various more complex settings.