Fairness & Fair Division

Diagram illustrating the process of solving a fair division problem, showing the relationship between fair division problem, fairness structure, and fairness function.

My main research goal is to develop a philosophically adequate theory of fairness which starts out from the idea, advocated for by a.o. John Broome and Nicholas Rescher, that fairness requires that claims are satisfied in proportion to their strength. I seek to elaborate on and makes precise this idea, for a wide variety of situations, by exploiting suitable models (“fairness structures’’) that have been proposed, in the economics literature, on fair division. The idea for this research project came up when I realized that the literatures on bankruptcy problems and cooperative games, with which I am familiar due to my MSc in Econometrics, were highly relevant for the philosophical literature on fairness. In fact, although I was not aware of the philosophical literature on fairness at that time, my first publication (Wintein et al, 2006), which summarizes my MSc thesis, is about the relation between a generalization of bankruptcy problems and their relation to cooperative games. What I really like about this research project is that it allows me to fully exploit my triple background as a philosopher, econometrician and logician. Also, that it allows me to combine research and teaching. As an example, the paper Liberal Political Equality does not imply Proportional Representation (Soc. Choice Welf, 2022) resulted from teaching preparations for the ReMA course Social Choice Theory and Political Representation.

The book Elections and Fair Division (joint with Harrie de Swart) consists of two independent parts. I authored chapters 7-12, which make up the second part of the book, which deals with Fair Division. In order to give you an idea of the content of part II, here is a quote from the preface of the book:

In a fair division problem a scarce good, also called the estate, has to be divided amongst some agents and the problem is to do so in a fair way. The claims-based and preference-based approach to fair division take, respectively, claims and preferences of the agents into account for realizing fair divisions. This book takes the claims-based approach. In a nutshell, all chapters on fair division, except from the very last one, present models for claims-based fair division. The presented overview of claims-based models and corresponding allocation rules is, deliberately, biased. For, models and rules are presented with an eye towards the extent to which they can elaborate on and make precise the idea that ‘fairness requires that claims are satisfied in proportion to their strength’. This idea has been advocated for, in the philosophical literature, by a.o. Nicholas Rescher and John Broome. Chapter 7 sketches the philosophical underpinning of ‘proportional claims-based fairness’ and briefly introduces the claims-based models that will be discussed in subsequent chapters.

The claims-based models that are discussed in subsequent chapters are, respectively: bankruptcy problems / weighed bankruptcy problems / (weighted) bankruptcy problems with discrete estates and cooperative games. The final chapter gives a concise overview of preference-based fair division.

Book cover titled 'Elections and Fair Division: An introduction to Social Choice Theory' by Harriet de Swart and Stefan Wintzen, published by Springer.

Below you find the publications associated with my research on Fairness & Fair Division which, eventually, will give rise to a monograph (“Outline of a Theory of Fairness”) in which I articulate the envisioned theory of fairness. In addition to these academic publications, I have also co-authored two blogposts about fairness at the Dutch philosophy website Bij Nader Inzien:

Publications

Work in progress

To be added.