A Parametric Worst-Case Approach to Fairness in TU-Cooperative Games

Abstract

We propose a parametric family of measures of fairness in allocations of TU-cooperative games. Their definition is based on generalized Renyi Entropy, is related to the Cowell-Kuga generalized entropy indices in welfare economics, and aims to parallel the spirit of the notion of price of anarchy in the case of convex TU-cooperative games. Since computing these indices is NP-complete in general, we first upper bound the performance of a "reverse greedy" algorithm for approximately computing worst-case fairness. The result provides a general additive error guarantee in terms of two (problem dependent) packing constants. We then particularize this result to the class of induced subset games. For such games computing worst-case fairness is NP-complete, and the additive guarantee constant can be explicitly computed. We compare this result to the performance of an alternate algorithm based on "biased orientations".