Fair distribution of bundles

Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of splitting fairly bundles of items. We show that given $n$ bundles with $m$ kinds of items in them, it is possible to distribute the value of each kind of item fairly among $r$ persons by breaking apart at most $(r-1)m$ bundles. Moreover, we can guarantee that each participant will receive roughly $n/r - mr/2$ full bundles. The proof methods are topological and use a modified form of the configuration space/test map scheme. We obtain optimal results when $r$ is a power of two.