Research map / Learning theory and algorithms / Submodular and game algorithms
Fair division of indivisible goods
Study envy-free and efficient allocation of goods and chores with approximation guarantees.
130 accepted papers at ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR and AAAI (2016–2026) · an approach in Submodular and game algorithms, keyword cluster “voting · allocation · agents”
State History Tried Preprints Who Export
Where it stands
Not enough benchmark data Fewer than four papers report the same benchmark, so there is no record to follow.
24 papers in 2023–24 and 46 in 2025–26 (at ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR and AAAI); its share of the topic grew, from 11.8% to 19.0%.
How this is decided
A benchmark is tracked when at least four papers of this approach report their own method on the same dataset and metric in at least two different years. Its record is the best number reported up to 2024 compared with the best reported in 2025–26: still improving means at least 1% better, flat means at most 0.2% better with at least two papers from 2025–26 trying. Numbers on a different scale from the rest (a fraction among percentages) and far outliers are left out. Results come from different papers with different setups, so they are signals, not head-to-head comparisons. The share of papers is counted at ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, CVPR and AAAI.
How it got here
Most cited paper of each year
- 2016 · When Can the Maximin Share Guarantee Be Guaranteed? (AAAI 2016 · 87 citations)
- 2017 · Algorithms for Max-Min Share Fair Allocation of Indivisible Chores (AAAI 2017 · 86 citations)
- 2018 · Groupwise Maximin Fair Allocation of Indivisible Goods (AAAI 2018 · 50 citations)
- 2019 · Envy-Free Classification (NeurIPS 2019 · 15 citations)
- 2020 · Price of Fairness in Budget Division and Probabilistic Social Choice (AAAI 2020 · 24 citations)
- 2021 · Fair and Truthful Mechanisms for Dichotomous Valuations (AAAI 2021 · 53 citations)
- 2022 · Fair and Efficient Allocations of Chores under Bivalued Preferences (AAAI 2022 · 32 citations)
- 2023 · Class Fairness in Online Matching (AAAI 2023 · 9 citations)
- 2024 · Mixed Fair Division: A Survey (AAAI 2024 · 12 citations)
- 2025 · Epistemic EFX Allocations Exist for Monotone Valuations (AAAI 2025 · 4 citations)
- 2026 · Existence of 2-EFX Allocations of Chores (AAAI 2026 · 2 citations)
Earliest papers here
- When Can the Maximin Share Guarantee Be Guaranteed? (AAAI 2016 · 87 citations)
- An Algorithmic Framework for Strategic Fair Division (AAAI 2016 · 19 citations)
- Achieving Stable and Fair Profit Allocation with Minimum Subsidy in Collaborative Logistics (AAAI 2016 · 7 citations)
What has been tried
77 papers here report 547 measured changes (a component added, removed or swapped, compared with a baseline): helped 57%, no clear effect 6%, hurt 33%, mixed 3%. Papers mostly publish changes that helped, so "helped" is over-represented.
Ablations in recent papers
| What was changed | Measured on | Result | Effect | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Remove the cleanness requirement from MWHW_x | Matroid-rank valuations · TWEF(x,1-x) guarantee | Hurt | Weighted Envy-Freeness for Submodular Valuations (AAAI 2024 · 5 citations) | |
| use only predictions, without the stealing component | Synthetic two-player instances with accurate predictions · MMS allocation quality | No clear effect | Plant-and-Steal: Truthful Fair Allocations via Predictions (NeurIPS 2024 · 1 citation) | |
| use the greedy-like allocation with a 1/2-MMS stopping threshold | SPLC fair division (example with 4 agents and 8 goods) · MMS approximation factor | 1/2 | Hurt | 1/2-Approximate MMS Allocation for Separable Piecewise Linear Concave Valuations (AAAI 2024) |
Recent preprints
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Who publishes on it
Institutions on the most papers of this approach since 2023 (of 70 papers; from OpenAlex and the papers' affiliations).
- The University of Tokyo · 5 papers
- The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · 5 papers
- University of Toronto · 4 papers
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign · 3 papers
- Microsoft · 3 papers
- Tel Aviv University · 3 papers
- National University of Singapore · 3 papers
- Kyushu University · 3 papers
- University of Oxford · 3 papers
- Saarland Informatics Campus · 3 papers
Use it
Download BibTeX of 38 key papersOpen the topic in the interactive map
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Related approaches
Same keyword cluster
- Matching markets and welfare (119 papers)
- Learned auction design (105 papers)
- Committee voting rules (120 papers)
Elsewhere in the topic
- Opponent modeling and subgame solving (116 papers)
- Monotone submodular maximization (116 papers)
- Zero-sum game learning dynamics (107 papers)
- Correlated equilibria in sequential games (86 papers)
- Streaming submodular algorithms (73 papers)
- Submodular influence maximization (33 papers)
- Equilibrium solvers for adversarial games (25 papers)
Benchmark numbers, ablations and baseline numbers are extracted by AI from each paper's full text and can be wrong; the paper is the authority. Data: results index of 2026-11-02, citation counts from OpenAlex (2026-10-09).