The Price of Fairness of Scheduling a Scarce Resource

Balancing Fairness and Efficiency: The Price of Fairness in Scheduling Scarce Resources “The Price of Fairness of Scheduling a Scarce Resource” investigates the trade-offs between fairness and utility when scheduling scarce resources among multiple stakeholders. The research focuses on envy-freeness, a widely recognized fairness criterion, and explores how fairness constraints impact overall utility, quantified by the price of fairness—the ratio of attainable utility with and without fairness considerations. By analyzing various factors, including the number of agents, time horizon, discount factors, and switching costs, the authors derive tight bounds on the price of fairness. Interestingly, they discover that, whereas fairness often increases utility loss, certain parameters—such as reducing the time horizon or increasing the number of agents—can counterintuitively reduce this loss. These findings offer strategic insights for decision makers facing fairness constraints in scheduling, helping them navigate complex trade-offs between equitable resource allocation and maximizing efficiency.