Operations Research 2025
Abstract Submission

2352. Fairness and Efficiency for Scarce Resource Allocation

Invited abstract in session TC-11: Theory & Methods, stream Pricing and Revenue Management.

Thursday, 11:45-13:15
Room: U2-200

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Alejandro Lamas
NEOMA Business School
2. Hamed Jalali
Department of information systems, supply chain management, and decision making, NEOMA Business school
3. Mosayeb Jalilian
Information Systems, Supply Chain Management & Decision Support, Neoma Business School

Abstract

We consider a decision-maker that aims to balance revenues and fairness when allocating a scarce resource among two customer classes. Customers’ requests arrive stochastically. This problem fits to the allocation of public goods, like medical supplies, ticket to massive events and transportation, etc. Different to our work, current literature focuses on either fairness or revenues. We propose several fairness measures based on both demand fill rate and Rawls’ notion of fairness, i.e., we maximize the minimum expected fill rate and the expected minimum fill rate. For scenarios where requests of classes realize sequentially, we characterize both revenue optimal and fair allocations; we develop a dynamic programming approach for more complex environments in which arrivals pattern is uncertain. In addition, we study how to relax fairness considerations so managers can control the trade-off between revenues and allocation equity.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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