Two-Person Fair Division of Indivisible Items: An Efficient, Envy-Free Algorithm

T he problem of fairly dividing a divisible good, such as cake or land, between two people probably goes back to the dawn of civilization. The first mention we know of in Western literature of the well-known procedure, “I cut, you choose,” occurs in the Hebrew Bible, wherein Abraham and Lot divide the land that lies before them, with Abraham obtaining Canaan and Lot obtaining Jordan (Genesis 13: 5-13). Since then, a plethora of procedures have been suggested for dividing a cake among two or more players [8], [14]. Although not all the desirable properties one might hope for can be achieved with