REFINEMENTS OF THE NO-ENVY SOLUTION IN ECONOMIES WITH INDIVISIBLE GOODS

We consider the problem of fair allocation in economies with indivisib le goods. Our primary concept is that of an envy-free allocation, that is, an allocation such that no agent would prefer anyone else's bundl e to his own. Since there typically is a large set (a continuum) of su ch allocations, the need arises to identify well-behaved selections fr om the no-envy solution. First we establish the non-existence of 'popu lation monotonic' selections. Then we propose a variety of selections motivated by intuitive considerations of fairness.