# Obvious Manipulations in Cake-Cutting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02988 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02988/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Aug 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Obvious Manipulability of Voting Rules](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01983/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In cake-cutting, strategy-proofness is a very costly requirement in terms of fairness: for n=2 it implies a dictatorial allocation, whereas for n > 2 it requires that one agent receives no cake. We show that a weaker version of this property recently suggested by Troyan and Morril, called non-obvious manipulability, is compatible with the strong fairness property of proportionality, which guarantees that each agent receives 1/n of the cake. Both properties are satisfied by the leftmost leaves mechanism, an adaptation of the Dubins - Spanier moving knife procedure. Most other classical proportional mechanisms in literature are obviously manipulable, including the original moving knife mechanism. Non-obvious manipulability explains why leftmost leaves is manipulated less often in practice than other proportional mechanisms.