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This paper studies sequential information design (Doval and Ely in Econometrica 88:2575–2608, 2020) in which a designer can construct the extensive form along with the information structure. In this framework, I investigate robust implementations against adversarial equilibrium selection, when players and the designer have a supermodular payoff function with dominant states and an outside option. The main results show that the optimal partially implementable outcome is fully implementable in sequential information design, which essentially coincides with the optimal partially implementable outcome in static information design. For economic applications such as global game of regime change, this paper proposes a way to robustly achieve the desired outcome in static information design by providing the extensive form and the information structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a two-sided one-to-one market setting where one side of the market is objectively ranked. Constraints prevent agents on the other side from matching with agents who are ranked higher than an agent-specific threshold. The domain allows for indifferences, with preferences of one side being derived from a master preference list, while agents on the other side have general preferences. We analyze matchings with respect to two standard properties: stability and efficiency. Having met these standard goals, the designer facing this problem may additionally care about a third criterion: the size of the matching. We find that for the proposed domain all stable matchings have the same size. We characterize the set of stable and efficient matchings for the problem. Our results show that every matching that is both stable and efficient is hierarchical by nature in a precise sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A negotiator, in order to achieve her goal, must induce an agent to cooperate. The agent faces costs or risks for cooperating. I develop a game-theoretic model where the negotiator may issue a negotiation statement that contains a threat of punishment for non-cooperation and a promise of reward for cooperation; after which the agent must choose either to cooperate or not. I derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which combining a threat with a promise is effective and credible in inducing the agent's full cooperation. I discuss insights from the model in the context of two applications. My analysis provides a rationale for the use of both promise and threat in negotiations to establish cooperation, increasing the chance of achieving the negotiator's goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a federal government's optimal redistributive policy across regions in the context of a model in which regions issue debt, invest in intergenerational public goods (IPGs), and have private information regarding the durability of their IPG investment. First, in both the complete-information and the asymmetric-information optimum, the region with a higher degree of intergenerational spillovers (H-region) should borrow more than the region with a lower degree (L-region). Second, to induce truth-telling under asymmetric information, the region not distorted on intertemporal allocation should be the contributor of redistribution. Third, the asymmetric-information optimum is implementable through decentralized regional debt decisions by imposing differentiated budget institutions: if H-region is distorted on intertemporal allocation, then it faces a debt floor; if L-region is distorted, then it faces a debt ceiling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies delegation and communication in a model of three-tier hierarchy. There is an uninformed principal, and uninformed intermediary, and an informed agent. Under delegation the principal chooses an interval of actions to delegate to the intermediary, and the intermediary chooses a sub-interval from that interval to delegate to the agent. Under communication, the agent communicates with the intermediary, after which the intermediary communicates with the principal. We characterize the equilibrium outcomes under delegation and communication. We show that under delegation the principal can appoint a more biased individual to be the intermediary, and a less biased individual to be the agent. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the principal can prefer to communicate with the subordinates rather than delegate decision rights to them if the intermediary and the agent have opposing biased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies strategic information disclosure when the sender may not observe the payoff-relevant state, and the receiver may interpret messages naively. We characterize equilibria as a function of the language available to the sender. The language is simple if an informed sender can either fully disclose the state or nothing. The language is rich if he can disclose any closed interval containing the true state. We show that an informed sender and a strategic receiver get a higher ex-ante equilibrium payoff when the language is rich. The reverse holds for a naive receiver and an uninformed sender. Overall, our work suggests that the design of language is key in situations where disclosure is voluntary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper characterizes the optimal collusion-proof mechanism in a two-agent nonlinear pricing environment. Our model allows agents to have correlated types and to reallocate their total purchases among themselves. We show that, under strongly negative correlation, the coalition will, sometimes, be torn apart at no cost. Under positive or weakly negative correlations, however, the threat of collusion forces the principal to distort allocation away from the first-best level obtained without collusion. We also show that, in contrast to the result of Laffont and Martimort (Econometrica 68:309-342, 2000), when the correlation is almost perfectly positive, the possibility of arbitrage prevents the principal from approaching the first-best efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment revisits Chung and Ely (Rev Econ Stud 74:447-476, 2007) in which robustly optimal auctions where investigated. Chung and Ely used a maxmin approach to define robust optimality. Chung and Ely provided conditions under which dominant strategy auctions are robustly optimal in their sense. This comment proposes a refinement of Chung and Ely's criterion and shows that, with this refined criterion, dominant strategy auctions are not optimal if there are at least three bidders. According to the refinement the auctioneer should not choose dominated auctions, that is, auctions for which there exist other mechanisms that never generate lower expected revenue, and sometimes higher expected revenue. We construct such a dominating mechanism for dominant strategy auctions. The construction exploits the possibility of side bets when beliefs are not derived from common priors. Chung and Ely (Rev Econ Stud 74:447-476, 2007) admitted such beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study school choice markets where the non-strategy-proof Boston mechanism is used to assign students to schools. Inspired by previous field and experimental evidence, we analyze a type of behavior called priority-driven: students have a common ranking over the schools and then give a bonus in their submitted preferences to those schools for which they have high priority. We first prove that under this behavior, there is a unique stable and efficient matching, which is the outcome of the Boston mechanism. Second, we show that the three most prominent mechanisms on school choice (Boston, deferred acceptance, and top trading cycles) coincide when students' submitted preferences are priority-driven. Finally, we run some computational simulations to show that the assumption of priority-driven preferences can be relaxed by introducing an idiosyncratic preference component, and our qualitative results carry over to a more general model of preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies combinatorial auctions with budget-constrained bidders from a mechanism design perspective. I search for mechanisms that are incentive compatible, individually rational, symmetric, non-wasteful and non-bossy. First focusing on the greedy domain, in which any increase in a bidder's valuation always exceeds his budget, I derive the unique mechanism, called the Iterative Second Price Auction. For the general domain, however, no such mechanism exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a dynamic moral hazard model where the principal offers a series of short-run contracts. We study the optimal mix of two alternative instruments for incentive provision: a performance based wage (a 'carrot') and a termination threat (a 'stick'). At any given point in time, these instruments are substitutes in the provision of incentives. We are particularly interested in the dynamic interaction of these two instruments. Both carrot and stick are used more intensively as the agent approaches the end of his finite life. The sharing of the surplus of the relationship plays a key role: a termination threat is included in the optimal contract if and only if the agent's expected future gain from the relationship is sufficiently high, compared to the principal's expected future gain. Also, a termination threat is more likely to be optimal if output depends more on 'luck' than on effort, if the discount factor is high, or if the agent's productivity is low. The model, provided that the optimal contract includes a termination threat, essentially provides an alternative explanation for upward-sloping wage profiles even in the absence of full-commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that jump bids can be used by a bidder to create a winner's curse and preserve an informational advantage that would otherwise disappear in the course of an open ascending auction. The effect of the winner's curse is to create allocative distortions and reduce the seller's expected revenue. Two novel features of equilibrium jump bids are derived. First, the jump bid may fail to hide completely the value of the common value component. Second, a bidder with a higher type might jump bid less frequently than a bidder with a lower type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A production process involves a principal and two privately informed agents. Production requires coordinated decision making. It might be carried in a centralized organization or through delegated contracting in a hierarchical structure. We compare the performance of different organizational structures when renegotiation of initial contracts is possible. We show that delegated contracting always dominates centralization if the downstream contract between the agents is observable. Contracting (resp. control) should be delegated to the agent with the least (resp. most) important information. If downstream contracts are not observable, we obtain a tradeoff between centralization and delegation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an industry where regulated firms interact with unregulated competitors, we investigate the welfare effects of a merger between regulated firms when efficiency gains are uncertain before the merger and their realization becomes private information of the merged firm. The optimal merger policy trades off potential efficiency gains against regulatory distortions from informational problems. We show that, as a consequence of this trade-off, fiercer competition between unregulated firms induces a more lenient merger policy. However, if the regulated firms diversify into a competitive segment of the market, softer competition can relax the optimal merger policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study two-sided many-to-one matching markets with interdependent valuations and imperfect information held by one side of the market. The other side has common and known preferences over potential mates. In this setting, pairwise stability does not imply group stability: mechanisms that are stable with respect to deviations by pairs of agents may be vulnerable to deviations by groups. We formalize a notion of group stability and construct a 'modified serial dictatorship' mechanism that implements group stable matchings. We further discuss the robustness of our notion of stability and examine efficiency properties of modified serial dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ownership positions in large corporations can be traded on anonymous markets, but professional partnerships and worker cooperatives prohibit members from transferring their positions to outsiders without the consent of other insiders. These contrasting policies can be explained by adverse selection, which implies that the joint payoff of the partners is at least as large when continuing rather than departing members choose the terms on which new partners can join. In a separating equilibrium, or a pooling equilibrium in which only low-quality workers apply for positions, market sorting reduces total surplus. The market can sometimes improve on random assignment of workers to firms when there is a pooling equilibrium in which both high- and low-quality types apply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how buyers' behaviors, sellers' profits and the social welfare (the total surplus of all sellers and buyers) vary with the order of sellers in sequential auctions where sellers have different reservation values. First, when reserve prices are exogenously set to be sellers' reservation values, a social planner would order sellers from low to high based on their reservation values, which yields a uniquely efficient order that maximizes the social welfare. However, an auctioneer charged with maximizing the total profit of all sellers would want to reverse the increasing order in certain situations. Second, when reserve prices can be endogenously selected in addition to the order of sellers, the auctioneer would always want to adopt the increasing order for the optimally chosen reserve prices. Sequential auctions with optimally chosen reserve prices and an increasing order are shown optimal among the class of voluntary and incentive-compatible mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper replacesGibbard's (Econometrica 45:665-681, ) assumption of strict ordinal preferences by themore natural assumption of cardinal preferences on the set pure social alternatives and we also admit indifferences among the alternatives. By following a similar line of reasoning to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theoremin the deterministic framework, we first show that if a decision scheme satisfies strategy proofness and unanimity, then there is an underlying probabilistic neutrality result which generates an additive coalitional power function. This result is then used to prove that a decision scheme which satisfies strategy proofness and unanimity can be represented as a weak random dictatorship. A weak random dictatorship assigns each individual a chance to be a weak dictator. An individual has weak dictatorial power if the support of the social choice lottery is always a subset of his/her maximal utility set. In contrast to Gibbard's complete characterization of randomdictatorship, we also demonstrate with an example that strategy proofness and unanimity are sufficient but not necessary conditions for a weak random dictatorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider how information concentration affects a seller's revenue in common value auctions. The common value is a function of $$n$$ random variables partitioned among $$m \le n$$ bidders. For each partition, the seller devises an optimal mechanism. We show that whenever the value function allows scalar sufficient statistics for each player's signals, the mechanism design problem is well-defined. Additionally, whenever a common regularity condition is satisfied, a coarser partition always reduces revenues. In particular, any merger or collusion among bidders reduces revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider multiple-principal multiple-agent models of moral hazard: principals compete through mechanisms in the presence of agents who take unobservable actions. In this context, we provide a rationale for restricting principals to make use of simple mechanisms, which correspond to direct mechanisms in the standard framework of Myerson (J Math Econ 10:67-81, ). Our results complement those of Han (J Econ Theory 137(1):610-626, ) who analyzes a complete information setting where agents' actions are fully contractible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend the conditions for incentive compatibility in mechanism design problems to a more general structure of preferences than that found in the literature, for the case where type is one-dimensional but the outcome function becomes multidimensional. This is so, at least, as long as preferences can be represented by means of sub-utility functions, it is adopted a weak single-crossing property and direct mechanisms turn out to be differentiable. When direct mechanisms are not differentiable, local incentive conditions still remain fully incentive compatible, provided utility is weakly separable in the outcome function, or else, it exhibits linearity in the type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]