Fair Resource Allocation

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Overview

The field studies how to divide scarce or indivisible resources among people, groups, or services while balancing equitable outcomes with overall utility. For goods, common approaches include envy-freeness up to one item (EF1), envy-freeness up to any item (EFX), and maximin-share guarantees; for online settings, researchers use primal-dual methods, bandits, and reinforcement learning. These methods are applied to settings such as healthcare, energy distribution, wireless networks, and shared computing capacity, where arrivals, demand, and resource limits may change over time. A central challenge is that fairness guarantees can reduce efficiency or become computationally difficult, and results depend on which fairness measure and operational constraints are chosen.

Latest papers

CardsList

59 papers11 papers in the last four weeks, up 120% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. When Should AI Decide, Defer, and Deviate? Responsible Automation for Deceased Donor Kidney Allocation

    Oct 28, 2026Madeleine Pollack, Thomas Daillak, Mehmet Toner +3Responsible AIClinical Decision-Making

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 · Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114 · Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115

  2. Floor It, Then Fill It: Simulating Creator Ecosystems for Fair Video-Content Recommendation Systems at Billion User Scale

    Oct 28, 2026Sohini Roychowdhury, Long Sha, Sunand Agarwal +5Recommender SystemsFairness in Recommender Systems

    Meta Platforms, Inc., Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA

  3. When Is a Cheap Fairness Edit Safe? Screening Post-Hoc Edits in Two-Sided Matching Markets

    Oct 27, 2026Moirangthem Tiken Singha, Rabinder Kumar PrasadaFair Resource AllocationDebiased ML

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dibrugarh University Institute of Engineering and Technology, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam, India

  4. Online Fair Division with Frequency Predictions

    Oct 25, 2026Tzeh Yuan Neoh, Nicholas TehFair Resource AllocationLearning-Augmented Algorithms

    Harvard University, USA · University of Oxford, UK

  5. Weighted Fairness in Multi-User Earth Observation Satellite Scheduling

    Oct 25, 2026Maxime Lucet, Nawal Benabbou, Aurélie Beynier +2Fair Resource AllocationMulti-Objective Optimization

    LIP6, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France · ONERA, DTIS, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France

  6. A Dynamic Inventory Rationing Model for Last-Mile Delivery of Medication in Liberia's Community Health Program

    Oct 23, 2026Baris Ata, Yufan Chen, Robert MontgomeryInventory ControlSupply Chain Optimization

    Booth School of Business, University of Chicago · Rady School of Management, University of California San Diego

  7. FairFRESH: A Neuro-Symbolic Framework for Fair and Explainable Household Food Recommendation

    Oct 22, 2026Kodur Sai Vinay Sathvik, Kakoli Bora, Tejaswini R. MFair Resource AllocationSocial Welfare Maximization

    Department of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, BNM Institute of Technology

  8. Exact Cut Complexity of Equal-Length Proportional Cake Cutting

    Oct 14, 2026Yasushi Kawase, Bodhayan Roy, Mohammad Azharuddin SanpuiFair Resource AllocationQuery Complexity

    Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan · Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India

  9. PPAD-Completeness of Contiguous Envy-Free Cake Cutting with Additive Valuations

    Oct 14, 2026Yasushi Kawase, Bodhayan Roy, Mohammad Azharuddin SanpuiFair Resource Allocation

    Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan · Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India

  10. Improving the Bounds on Approximating Weighted Maximin Share for Chores

    Oct 11, 2026Trung Thanh Nguyen, Khaled Elbassioni, Jörg RotheFair Resource AllocationApproximation Algorithms

    Faculty of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, National Economics University, Hanoi 11616, Vietnam · Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, UAE · Institut für Informatik, MNF, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

  11. Minimizing Cumulative Envy in Allocating a Sequence of Items

    Oct 7, 2026Paul W. Goldberg, Isaac Robinson, Nicholas TehFair Resource AllocationApproximation Algorithms

    University of Oxford, UK

  12. Settling the Computational Complexity of Max-Min Allocation with Ternary Valuations

    Oct 4, 2026Thi Ngoc Anh Vu, Trung Thanh Nguyen, Khaled Elbassioni +1Submodular OptimizationSocial Choice Theory

    Faculty of Computer Science, Phenikaa University, Hanoi 12116, Vietnam · DataOptLab, National Economics University, Hanoi 11616, Vietnam · Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, UAE +1

  13. Maximizing pp-Mean Social Welfare in the High-Multiplicity Setting: Few Agent Types and Few Item Types

    Oct 3, 2026Trung Thanh Nguyen, Khaled ElbassioniSocial Welfare MaximizationFair Resource Allocation

    DataOptLab, National Economics University, Hanoi 11616, Vietnam · Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, UAE

  14. Fair Policy Optimization in Major-Minor Weakly Coupled Markov Decision Processes

    Sep 28, 2026Xiaohui Tu, Yossiri Adulyasak, Erick DelageFair Resource AllocationMarkov Decision Processes

    GERAD & Department of Decision Sciences, HEC Montréal, Montréal, H3T2A7, Canada · MILA - Quebec AI Institute, Montréal, H2S3H1, Canada · GERAD & Department of Logistics and Operations Management, HEC Montréal, Montréal, H3T2A7, Canada

  15. Multi-Dimensional Matching

    Sep 24, 2026Irene AldridgeMechanism DesignFair Resource Allocation

  16. The AR Fairness Metamodel: A Structured Framework for Fairness Measures

    Sep 16, 2026Julian Alfredo Mendez, Timotheus KampikFair Resource AllocationAlgorithmic Fairness

    Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

  17. Proportional-Fair Resource Allocation and Dual-Threshold Early-Exit Inference for Secure Cooperative Multi-Layer Edge Intelligence

    Sep 14, 2026Thai T. Vu, John Le, Tu N. Nguyen +3Edge InferenceFair Resource Allocation

    School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia · Department of Computer Science, Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA · CodeZX Software Company Limited, Vietnam

  18. EF1-Constrained Nash Social Welfare with Identical Additive Valuations: Complexity, Guarantees, and Experiments

    Sep 3, 2026Zih-Sian Yang, Yi-Hao Chen, Yu-Te Kuan +3Fair Resource AllocationOnline Resource Allocation

    National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung City 202301, Taiwan · National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu City 300, Taiwan

  19. Fair Like Us? Auditing LLM Alignment in Resource Allocation

    Aug 31, 2026Qishen Han, Hadi Hosseini, Joshua Kavner +3LLM AlignmentLLM Auditing

    Rutgers University · Pennsylvania State University · Independent Researcher +1

  20. Learning-Augmented Online Allocation under Unreliable Advice: Robustness, Exposure Fairness, and Distribution Shift

    Aug 27, 2026Fredy PokouOnline Resource AllocationLearning-Augmented Algorithms

    MRE, CRIStAL · Inria, University of Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France

  21. Simultaneous Envy and Equitability Guarantees

    Aug 26, 2026Hadi Hosseini, Shraddha Pathak, Lirong Xia +1Social Choice TheoryFair Resource Allocation

    Penn State University · Rutgers University

  22. Multilevel Fair Allocation under Additive Preferences

    Aug 25, 2026Maxime Lucet, Nawal Benabbou, Aurélie Beynier +1Fair Resource Allocation

    LIP6, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, F-75005 Paris, France

  23. Beyond Point Predictions: Uncertainty-Aware Satellite Poverty Mapping for Public Policy

    Aug 24, 2026Markus B. Pettersson, James Bailie, Mohammad Kakooei +2Regression Prediction IntervalsFair Resource Allocation

    Division of Data Science and AI, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden · Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden · AI & Global Development Lab, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden +3

  24. EFX Allocation In (Multi)Hypergraphs

    Aug 4, 2026Thanasis Lianeas, Alkmini Sgouritsa, Minas Marios SotiriouFair Resource Allocation

    University of West Attica · Greece · Athens University of Economics and Business +1

  25. Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Radio Resource Management under Coupled Finite-Horizon Constraints

    Aug 3, 2026Yeonseo Jeong, Wonhyeok Ko, Sungweon Hong +1Stochastic OptimizationFair Resource Allocation

    Department of Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea · Department of AI-Semiconductor, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea

  26. End-to-End Fairness Optimization with Fair Decision-Focused Learning

    Jul 31, 2026Yu Wang, Violet Xinying ChenFair Resource AllocationAlgorithmic Fairness

    School of Business Stevens Institute of Technology

  27. FairFund-Bench: Evaluating Distributive Bias in LLM Resource Allocation

    Jul 31, 2026Martin LukkBenchmark AuditingLLM Auditing

    University of Toronto

  28. Preference Elicitation for Policy Optimization and Application to Aligning Heart Transplantation with Human Values

    Jul 29, 2026Itai Zilberstein, Ioannis Anagnostides, Zachary W Sollie +2Preference ElicitationHuman Preference Modeling

    Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA · Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC · Strategy Robot, Inc., Strategic Machine, Inc., Optimized Markets, Inc.

  29. Parameterized Fair Resource Allocation under Diversity Constraints

    Jul 29, 2026Keke Huang, Yik Yu Ng, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan +1Fair Resource AllocationGroup Fairness

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, Hubei, China · The University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada · McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada +1

  30. Outcome-Fair Restless Multi-Armed Bandits for Stochastic Deadline Scheduling

    Jul 26, 2026Shakti Sharma, Rahul MeshramSequential Decision MakingFair Resource Allocation

    Dept. of Physics, IIT Madras, Chennai, India. · Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras, Chennai, India.