Law Commons^™

Fair Division, Michael J. Meurer

Faculty Scholarship

In this article I introduce legal scholars to concepts of fairness developed by microeconomic theorists. My starting point is a review of the books: Cooperative Microeconomics: A Game-Theoretic Introduction, by Herve Moulin, and Equity: In Theory and Practice, by H. Peyton Young. The books explain how to use cooperative game theory to study the fair allocation of benefits and costs. I illustrate the use of cooperative game theory by applying it to various problems of fair division in the law. I believe formal analysis of fair division is valuable because it allows scholars to connect their intuitive sense of fairness …