Fair Division of Goods in the Shadow of Market Values

Inheritance, divorces or liquidations of companies require common assets to be divided among the entitled parties. Legal methods usually consider the market value of goods, while fair division theory takes into account the parties' preferences expressed as utilities. I combine the two practices to define a procedure that optimally allocates divisible goods with market values to people with preferences. To keep the number of split items to a minimum, we suggest a procedure that does not deliver bundles of exact equal (or proportional) monetary value, but one in which the differences in that value are explained in terms of satisfaction per monetary share as perceived by the agents.