Undominated Groves Mechanisms

The family of Groves mechanisms, which includes the well-known VCG mechanism (also known as the Clarke mechanism) is a family of efficient and strategy-proof mechanisms. Unfortunately, the Groves mechanisms are generally not budget balanced. That is, under such mechanisms, payments may flow into or out of the system of the agents, resulting in deficits or reduced utilities for the agents. The authors consider the following problem: within the family of Groves mechanisms, they want to identify mechanisms that give the agents the highest utilities, under the constraint that these mechanisms must never incur deficits.