Approximating One-Sided and Two-Sided Nash Social Welfare With Capacities

We study the problem of maximizing Nash social welfare, which is the geometric mean of agents' utilities, in two well-known models. The first model involves one-sided preferences, where a set of indivisible items is allocated among a group of agents (commonly studied in fair division). The second model deals with two-sided preferences, where a set of workers and firms, each having numerical valuations for the other side, are matched with each other (commonly studied in matching-under-preferences literature). We study these models under capacity constraints, which restrict the number of items (respectively, workers) that an agent (respectively, a firm) can receive. We contribute constant-factor approximation algorithms for both problems under a broad class of valuations. Specifically, our main results are the following: (a) For any 𝜀 > 0, a (6 + 𝜀)-approximation algorithm for the one-sided problem when agents have submodular valuations, and (b) a 1.33-approximation algorithm for the two-sided problem when the firms have subadditive valuations. The former result provides the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for Nash welfare in the one-sided problem with submodular valuations and capacities, while the latter result significantly improves upon an existing √ OPT-approximation algorithm for additive valuations. Our result for the two-sided setting also establishes a computational separation between the Nash and utilitarian welfare objectives. We also complement our algorithms with hardness-of-approximation results.