On the Envy-free Allocation of Chores

Abstract: We study the problem of allocating a set of indivisible chores to three agents, among whom two have additive cost functions, in a fair manner. Two fairness notions under consideration are envy-freeness up to any chore (EFX) and a relaxed notion, namely envy-freeness up to transferring any chore (tEFX). In contrast to the case of goods, the case of chores remain relatively unexplored. In particular, our results constructively prove the existence of a tEFX allocation for three agents if two of them have additive cost functions and the ratio of their highest and lowest costs is bounded by two. In addition, if those two cost functions have identical ordering (IDO) on the costs of chores, then an EFX allocation exists even if the condition on the ratio bound is slightly relaxed. Throughout our entire framework, the third agent is unrestricted besides having a monotone cost function.