Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
We investigate the implications of welfare lower bounds together with queue-efficiency and strategy-proofness in the context of the queueing problem. First, we introduce the k-welfare lower bound, which requires that each agent should be guaranteed her utility at the kth queue position with zero transfer. For each k, we show that the k-pivotal rules (Mitra and Mutuswami, 2011) achieve the minimal deficit in each problem among all rules satisfying queue-efficiency, strategy-proofness, and the k-welfare lower bound. Next, we consider the identical costs lower bound, which is a counterpart of the identical preferences lower bound in our context, and show that when there is an odd number of agents, the k-pivotal rules with k=n+12 achieve the minimal deficit in each problem among all rules satisfying queue-efficiency, strategy-proofness, and the identical costs lower bound. Our results provide an alternative justification for the k-pivotal rules.