Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/320264 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theoretical Economics [ISSN:] 1555-7561 [Volume:] 19 [Issue:] 3 [Year:] 2024 [Pages:] 1185-1221
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
In the allocation of indivisible objects under weak priorities, a common practice is to break the ties using a lottery and randomize over deterministic mechanisms. Such randomizations usually lead to unfairness and inefficiency ex-ante. We propose and study the concept of ex-ante fairness for random allocations, extending some key results in the one-sided and two-sided matching markets. It is shown that the set of ex-ante fair random allocations forms a complete and distributive lattice under first-order stochastic dominance relations, and the agent-optimal ex-ante fair mechanism includes both the deferred acceptance algorithm and the probabilistic serial mechanism as special cases. Instead of randomizing over deterministic mechanisms, our mechanism is constructed using the division method, a new general way of constructing random mechanisms from deterministic mechanisms. As additional applications, we demonstrate that several previous extensions of the probabilistic serial mechanism have their foundations in existing deterministic mechanisms.
Subjects: 
Indivisible object
weak priority
random allocation
fairness
deferred acceptance algorithm
probabilistic serial mechanism
JEL: 
C78
D47
D71
D78
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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