Near-Optimal Best-of-Both-Worlds Fairness for Few Agents

Abstract

We consider the problem of fair allocation of indivisible goods among agents with additive valuations, aiming for Best-of-Both-Worlds (BoBW) fairness: a distribution over allocations that is ex-ante fair, and additionally, it is supported only on deterministic allocations that are ex-post fair. We focus on BoBW for few agents, and our main result is the design of the first BoBW algorithms achieving near-optimal fairness for three agents. For three agents, we prove the existence of an ex-ante proportional distribution whose every allocation is Epistemic EFX (EEFX) and guarantees each agent at least $\tfrac{9}{10}$ of her MMS. As MMS allocations do not exist for three additive agents, in every allocation at least one agent might not be getting her MMS. To compensate such an agent, we also guarantee that if an agent is not getting her MMS then she is EFX-satisfied - giving her the strongest achievable envy-based guarantee. Additionally, using an FPTAS for near-MMS partitions, we present an FPTAS to compute a BoBW distribution preserving all envy-based guarantees, and also preserving all value-based guarantees up to $(1-\varepsilon)$. We further show that exact ex-ante proportionality can be restored when dropping EEFX. To do so, we first design, for two agents and any $\varepsilon > 0$, a Fully Polynomial-Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS) that outputs a distribution which is ex-ante envy-free (and thus proportional) and ex-post envy-free up to any good (EFX), while guaranteeing each agent at least a $(1-\varepsilon)$-fraction of her maximin share (MMS). We then leverage this two-agent FPTAS algorithm as a subroutine to obtain, for three agents, the FPTAS guaranteeing exact ex-ante proportionality. We note that our result for two agents essentially matches the strongest fairness and efficiency guarantees achievable in polynomial time, and thus might be of independent interest.