Imperfect commitment and the revelation principle : the multi - agent case
نویسندگان
چکیده
We consider mechanism design problems with n agents when the mechanism designer cannot fully commit to an allocation function. With a single agent (n 5 1) optimal mechanisms can always be represented by direct mechanisms, under which each agent’s message set is the set of his possible types [Bester, H., Strausz, R., 2000. Contracting with imperfect commitment and the revelation principle: the single agent case. Free University of Berlin, mimeo]. We show that this result does not hold if n $ 2. That is, in mechanism design problems with multiple agents the use of direct mechanisms may be suboptimal. 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
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Imperfect Commitment and the Revelation Principle: the Multi-Agent Case with Transferable Utility
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