A Problem of Distributive Justice, Solved by the Lasso

The problem of dividing an estate among creditors, when their claims total more than the value of the estate, was posed in the Talmud and has been analyzed in the game theory literature. Here, we reveal a close connection between schemes for estate division and linear regression solution paths obtained by least angle regression or by the lasso. We focus primarily on the division scheme known as constrained equal awards, but also consider a more complex approach described by Aumann and Maschler. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.