Existence and Computation of Epistemic EFX Allocations (2206.01710v2)

Abstract: We consider the problem of allocating indivisible goods among $n$ agents in a fair manner. For this problem, one of the best notions of fairness is envy-freeness up to any good (EFX). However, it is not known if EFX allocations always exist. Hence, several relaxations of EFX allocations have been studied. We propose another relaxation of EFX, called epistemic EFX (EEFX). An allocation is EEFX iff for every agent $i$, it is possible to shuffle the goods of the other agents such that agent $i$ does not envy any other agent up to any good. We show that EEFX allocations always exist for additive valuations, and give a polynomial-time algorithm for computing them. We also show how EEFX is related to some previously-known notions of fairness.