Camp David: Was The Agreement Fair?

Abstract

The agreement between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1978 is used to illustrate how a fair-division procedure called Adjusted Winner (AW), in which two sides allocate 100 points over the issues that divide them, could have been used to reach a settlement. AW satisfies the properties of envy-freeness (each side is ensured of receiving at least 50 of its points and hence does not envy the other side), equitability (each side receives the same number of points over 50), and efficiency (there is no other settlement better for both players). While the actual agreement at Camp David seems to reflect quite well what AW would have yielded on the six issues that divided the two sides, this agreement probably could have been achieved more expeditiously, and in a less crisis-driven atmosphere, if AW had been used.

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