{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"An Asymptotically Optimal VCG Redistribution Mechanism for the Public Project Problem","authors":[{"name":"Mingyu Guo","slug":"mingyu-guo","given":"Mingyu","family":"Guo","affiliation":"School of Computer Science , University of Adelaide , Australia"}],"abstract":"We study the classic public project problem, where a group of agents need to decide whether or not to build a non-excludable public project.  We focus on efficient, strategy-proof, and weakly budget-balanced mechanisms (VCG redistribution mechanisms). Our aim is to maximize the worst-case efficiency ratio --- the worst-case ratio between the achieved total utility and the first-best maximum total utility. Previous studies have identified the optimal mechanism for 3 agents.  It was also conjectured that the worst-case efficiency ratio approaches 1 asymptotically as the number of agents approaches infinity.  Unfortunately, no optimal mechanisms have been identified for cases with more than 3 agents. We propose an asymptotically optimal mechanism, which achieves a worst-case efficiency ratio of 1, under a minor technical assumption: we assume the agents' valuations are rational numbers with bounded denominators.  We also show that if the agents' valuations are drawn from identical and independent distributions, our mechanism's efficiency ratio equals 1 with probability approaching 1 asymptotically.  Our results significantly improve on previous results. The best previously known asymptotic worst-case efficiency ratio is 0.102.  For non-asymptotic cases, our mechanisms also achieve better ratios than all previous results.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2019/45","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2019/45","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2019/0045.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2019/45.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2019/bibtex/45","volume":{"slug":"2019","title":"Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2019","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2019/","year":2019,"location":"Macao","dates":"10-16 August 2019","editors":"Sarit Kraus","isbn":"978-0-9992411-4-1","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2019"},"section":"Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems","track":"Main track","number":45,"pages":{"first":315,"last":321},"keywords":["Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Algorithmic Game Theory","Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: Economic Paradigms, Auctions and Market-Based Systems"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Cavallo, 2006] Ruggiero Cavallo. 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