Asymmetric rules for claims problems without homogeneity

We introduce a general class of rules for claims problems, called the difference rules, and demonstrate that a rule satisfies composition down and composition up if and only if it is a difference rule. We show that these rules are very simple to describe when there are two agents. In a variable population framework, we introduce a family of rules satisfying consistency, composition down, and composition up, which we term the logarithmic-proportional rules. These rules satisfy neither symmetry nor homogeneity. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.