The social cost of congestion games by imposing variable delays

Abstract

In this study, we describe a new coordination mechanism for non-atomic congestion games that leads to a (selfish) social cost which is arbitrarily close to the non-selfish optimal. This mechanism incurs no additional cost, in contrast to tolls that typically differ from the social cost as expressed in terms of delays.

Keywords

• Congestion games
• Price of anarchy
• Coordination mechanisms