Rationing a commodity along fixed paths

A commodity is divided among agents with single-peaked preferences. The com modity is either infinitely divisible or comes in indivisible units. A rati oning method elicits individual peaks (demands); if the commodity is overde manded (resp. underdemanded), no agent receives more (resp. less) than his peak. A fixed-path rationing method allocates an overdemanded "good" along a path independent of individual demands, except that an agent receives exa ctly his demand if it is below the path-generated share. An underdemanded " bad" is allocated similarly along another path. The four properties efficie ncy, strategyproofness, resource monotonicity, and consistency characterize the set of fixed path rationing methods. Journal of Economic Literature Cl assification Numbers: D63, D70. (C) 1999 Academic Press.