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            We study the problem of fairly allocating a set of indivisible goods among n agents with additive valuations. Envy freeness up to any good (EFX) is arguably the most compelling fairness notion in this context. However, the existence of an EFX allocation has not been settled and is one of the most important problems in fair division. Toward resolving this question, many impressive results show the existence of its relaxations. In particular, it is known that 0.618-EFX allocations exist and that EFX allocation exists if we do not allocate at most (n-1) goods. Reducing the number of unallocated goods has emerged as a systematic way to tackle the main question. For example, follow-up works on three- and four-agents cases, respectively, allocated two more unallocated goods through an involved procedure. In this paper, we study the general case and achieve sublinear numbers of unallocated goods. Through a new approach, we show that for every [Formula: see text], there always exists a [Formula: see text]-EFX allocation with sublinear number of unallocated goods and high Nash welfare. For this, we reduce the EFX problem to a novel problem in extremal graph theory. We define the notion of rainbow cycle number [Formula: see text] in directed graphs. For all [Formula: see text] is the largest k such that there exists a k-partite graph [Formula: see text], in which each part has at most d vertices (i.e., [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text]); for any two parts Viand Vj, each vertex in Vihas an incoming edge from some vertex in Vjand vice versa; and there exists no cycle in G that contains at most one vertex from each part. We show that any upper bound on [Formula: see text] directly translates to a sublinear bound on the number of unallocated goods. We establish a polynomial upper bound on [Formula: see text], yielding our main result. Furthermore, our approach is constructive, which also gives a polynomial-time algorithm for finding such an allocation. Funding: J. Garg was supported by the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering [Grant CCF-1942321]. R. Mehta was supported by the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering [Grant CCF-1750436].more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available November 1, 2025
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            We study fair distribution of a collection of m indivisible goods among a group of n agents, using the widely recognized fairness principles of Maximin Share (MMS) and Any Price Share (APS). These principles have undergone thorough investigation within the context of additive valuations. We explore these notions for valuations that extend beyond additivity.First, we study approximate MMS under the separable (piecewise-linear) concave (SPLC) valuations, an important class generalizing additive, where the best known factor was 1/3-MMS. We show that 1/2-MMS allocation exists and can be computed in polynomial time, significantly improving the state-of-the-art.We note that SPLC valuations introduce an elevated level of intricacy in contrast to additive. For instance, the MMS value of an agent can be as high as her value for the entire set of items. We use a relax-and-round paradigm that goes through competitive equilibrium and LP relaxation. Our result extends to give (symmetric) 1/2-APS, a stronger guarantee than MMS.APS is a stronger notion that generalizes MMS by allowing agents with arbitrary entitlements. We study the approximation of APS under submodular valuation functions. We design and analyze a simple greedy algorithm using concave extensions of submodular functions. We prove that the algorithm gives a 1/3-APS allocation which matches the best-known factor. Concave extensions are hard to compute in polynomial time and are, therefore, generally not used in approximation algorithms. Our approach shows a way to utilize it within analysis (while bypassing its computation), and hence might be of independent interest.more » « less
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            We study fair division of indivisible chores among n agents with additive disutility functions. Two well-studied fairness notions for indivisible items are envy-freeness up to one/any item (EF1/EFX) and the standard notion of economic efficiency is Pareto optimality (PO). There is a noticeable gap between the results known for both EF1 and EFX in the goods and chores settings. The case of chores turns out to be much more challenging. We reduce this gap by providing slightly relaxed versions of the known results on goods for the chores setting. Interestingly, our algorithms run in polynomial time, unlike their analogous versions in the goods setting.We introduce the concept of k surplus in the chores setting which means that up to k more chores are allocated to the agents and each of them is a copy of an original chore. We present a polynomial-time algorithm which gives EF1 and PO allocations with n-1 surplus.We relax the notion of EFX slightly and define tEFX which requires that the envy from agent i to agent j is removed upon the transfer of any chore from the i's bundle to j's bundle. We give a polynomial-time algorithm that in the chores case for 3 agents returns an allocation which is either proportional or tEFX. Note that proportionality is a very strong criterion in the case of indivisible items, and hence both notions we guarantee are desirable.more » « less
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