Allocation with Weak Priorities and General Constraints

Young-San Lin, Purdue University, USA

ABSTRACT:

We consider a resource allocation problem that combines three general features: complex resource constraints, weak priority rankings over the agents, and ordinal preferences over bundles of resources. We develop a mechanism based on a new concept called "Competitive Stable Equilibrium". It has several attractive properties, unifies two different frameworks of one-sided and two-sided markets, and extends existing methods to richer environments. Our framework also allows for an alternative and more flexible tie-breaking rule by giving agents different budgets. We empirically apply our mechanism to reassign season tickets to families in the presence of social distancing. Our simulation results show that our method outperforms existing ones in both efficiency and fairness measures.

Joint work with Hai Nguyen, Thanh Nguyen, and Kemal Altinkemer