Fair Division: From Cake-Cutting to Dispute Resolution - Hardcover

Brams, Steven J.; Taylor, Alan D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521553903 ISBN 13: 9780521553902

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Fair Division, unlike most research on fairness in the social sciences and mathematics, is devoted solely to the analysis of constructive procedures for actually dividing things up and resolving disputes, including indivisible items or issues, such as the marital property in a divorce or sovereignty in an international dispute.

About this title

Review

In a democracy, the problem of fair division of goods is fundamental. It is, for example, what's lurking behind contemporary discussions of affirmative action, divorce law, and even of Medicare and Social Security. Its flip-side problem--burden-sharing--which is implicated in such issues as taxation and the draft, is likewise central. The authors, one a political scientist, the other a mathematician, start with an analysis of the well-known cake-cutting paradigm of "I cut, you choose" and gradually soup it up into a model capable of accommodating situations in which there are more than two parties, or more than one good. They emphasize division procedures that are not only proportional (that give each of n claimants a 1/n share of the good), but that also have the psychological property of being "envy-free"; that is, producing allocations in which each participant thinks (often wrongly, obviously) that he received the largest portion.

Book Description

Unlike most research on fairness in the social sciences and mathematics, this text is devoted solely to the analysis of constructive procedures for actually dividing things up and resolving disputes, even indivisible items such as the marital property in a divorce or sovereignty in an international dispute.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0521553903
• ISBN 13: 9780521553902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 286