A Taxation Policy for Maximizing Social Welfare in Networks: A General Framework

We present a simple tatonnement process based on a decomposition method which is simple to implement and achieves the maximal social welfare, under the assumption that the utility function of each [price-taking] individual will be his own private information and need not be known by the designer. At each iteration, very little information needs to be exchanged among the individuals in order to achieve the optimal allocation. Furthermore, the given tatonnement process is always balanced at equilibrium and off equilibrium.