General allocation problems with single-peaked preferencespath-independence and related topics
ISSN: 1435-5469
Any de publicació: 2002
Volum: 4
Número: 1
Pàgines: 19-40
Tipus: Article
Altres publicacions en: Spanish economic review
Resum
We face the problem of allocationg a fixed amount of a perfectly divisible good among a group of agents with single-peaked preferences. We survey the three different cases studied in the literature: the pure distribution case, the redistribution case, and the gerneral case. The so called general case provide with a natural framework to analyze the idea of path-independence. In this framework, we explore the existence of rules fulfilling this property. Our first result is negative: a strong version of this property cannot be fulfilled together with efficiency. Nonetheless, some restricted versions of the path-independence property are compatible with interesting properties, in particular no manipulability, and no envy. We then identify two solutions satisfying this sort of property: the equal distance rule, and a new extension of the uniform rule.