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In the ε -Consensus-Halving problem, a fundamental problem in fair division, there are n agents with valuations over the interval [0, 1], and the goal is to divide the interval into pieces and assign a label ``+"" or `` - "" to each piece, such that every agent values the total amount of ``+"" and the total amount of `` - "" almost equally. The problem was recently proven by Filos-Ratsikas and Goldberg [Proceedings of the 50th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 2018, pp. 51--64; Proceedings of the 51st Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 2019, pp. 638--649] to be the first ``natural"" complete problem for the computational class PPA, answering a decade-old open question. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the problem becomes easy to solve if one restricts the class of valuation functions. To this end, we provide the following contributions. First, we obtain a strengthening of the PPA-hardness result of Filos-Ratsikas and Goldberg [Proceedings of the 51st Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 2019, pp. 638--649] to the case when agents have piecewise uniform valuations with only two blocks. We obtain this result via a new reduction, which is in fact conceptually much simpler than the corresponding one in Filos-Ratsikas and Goldberg [Proceedings of the 51st Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 2019, pp. 638--649]. Then, we consider the case of single-block (uniform) valuations and provide a parameterized polynomial-time algorithm for solving ε-Consensus-Halving for any ε, as well as a polynomial-time algorithm for ε = 1/2. Finally, an important application of our new techniques is the first hardness result for a generalization of Consensus-Halving, the Consensus-1/kDivision problem [F. W. Simmons and F. E. Su, Math. Social Sci., 45 (2003), pp. 15--25]. In particular, we prove that ε -Consensus-1/3-Division is PPAD-hard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the ε - Consensus-Halving problem, in which a set of heterogeneous agents aim at dividing a continuous resource into two (not necessarily contiguous) portions that all of them simultaneously consider to be of approximately the same value (up to ε). This problem was recently shown to be PPA-complete, for n agents and n cuts, even for very simple valuation functions. In a quest to understand the root of the complexity of the problem, we consider the setting where there is only a constant number of agents, and we consider both the computational complexity and the query complexity of the problem. For agents with monotone valuation functions, we show a dichotomy: for two agents the problem is polynomial-time solvable, whereas for three or more agents it becomes PPA-complete. Similarly, we show that for two monotone agents the problem can be solved with polynomially-many queries, whereas for three or more agents, we provide exponential query complexity lower bounds. These results are enabled via an interesting connection to a monotone Borsuk-Ulam problem, which may be of independent interest. For agents with general valuations, we show that the problem is PPA-complete and admits exponential query complexity lower bounds, even for two agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]