Definition Cardinal-Instance Fairness and Welfare Wrappers
definition formalized

Cardinal-Instance Fairness and Welfare Wrappers

The cardinal-instance API ([[social_choice.fair_division.cardinal_instance]]) re-exports the shared fairness and welfare predicates so they take an instance as input directly, sparing call sites from unpacking the utility field.

For an instance $I : \mathrm{CardinalInstance}\ N\ R\ S$ and an allocation $A$:

  • I.IsEnvyFree A ⇔ envy-freeness w.r.t. $I.\mathrm{utility}$ ([[social_choice.fair_division.envy_free]]).
  • I.IsProportional n whole A ⇔ proportional with whole share whole ([[social_choice.fair_division.proportional]]).
  • I.IsEquitable A ⇔ equitable ([[social_choice.fair_division.equitable]]).
  • I.IsParetoOptimal A ⇔ Pareto optimal under $I.\mathrm{feasible}$ ([[social_choice.fair_division.pareto_optimal]]).
  • I.utilitarianWelfare A, I.egalitarianWelfare A ⇔ welfare aggregations ([[social_choice.fair_division.utilitarian_welfare]], [[social_choice.fair_division.egalitarian_welfare]]).
  • I.IsUtilitarianOptimal A, I.IsMaxmin A ⇔ welfare-optimality under $I.\mathrm{feasible}$.

Each wrapper is a definitional pass-through to the underlying generic predicate; no extra invariants are introduced. The point is purely ergonomic: at the instance layer one writes I.IsEnvyFree A instead of spelling out IsEnvyFree I.utility A.

The divisible-instance and indivisible-instance wrappers ([[social_choice.fair_division.divisible.cardinal_instance]], [[social_choice.fair_division.indivisible.cardinal_instance]]) compose this layer with the structured allocation types.

References

  • [AGT Chapter 11] Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos, and Vazirani, Algorithmic Game Theory. Cardinal fair-division wrappers.

Also in