We prove that there exist social choice correspondences that can be implemented in undominated strategies, using finite mechanisms, but can require arbitrarily many strategies to do so, even when there are only two agents and two types of each agent. This is in sharp contrast with dominant-strategy implementation, where the revelation principle implies that only one strategy for each type of ag...

The present article considers the situation in which the buyer’s taste and budget are his private information. In this multi-dimensional setting, we study the optimal mechanism through a canonical mechanism in the traditional one-dimensional context: a function of one variable, the buyer’s taste. In our multi-dimensional context, however, this is an indirect mechanism. We investigate the effect...

We consider two Bayesian agents who learn from exogenously provided private signals, as well as the actions of the other. Our main finding is that increased interaction between the agents can lower the speed of learning: when both agents observe each other, learning is significantly slower than it is when one only observes the other. This slowdown is driven by a process in which a consensus on ...

We study the war of attrition and the all-pay auction when players' signals are affiliated and symmetrically distributed. We (a) find sufficient conditions for the existence of symmetric monotonic equilibrium bidding strategies and (b) examine the performance of these auction forms in terms of the expected revenue accruing to the seller. Under our conditions the war of attrition raises greater ...

We modify W. Vickrey's (1961, J. Finance 16, 8 37) mechanism for call markets by introducing the participation stage and study the efficiency properties of the modified mechanism. We provide sufficient conditions under which the modified Vickrey double auction achieves full efficiency. In addition, we prove that the modified Vickrey double auction achieves asymptotic efficiency even when full e...

Alternative payment instruments are studied in an economy with private information, delayed communication, and limited commitment. Attention is restricted to checks and bank drafts, which differ in resource cost and communication characteristics. Checks are less costly but settlement delays create a limited commitment constraint. We Þnd that drafts dominate at low wealths and checks at higher w...

We are the first paper to analyse and confirm the existence and extent of rational informational herding and rational informational contrarianism in a financial market experiment, and to compare and contrast these with the equivalent irrational phenomena. In our study, subjects generally behaved according to benchmark rationality. Moreover, traders who should herd or be contrarian in theory are...

A number of identical objects is allocated to a set of privately informed agents. Agents have linear utility in money. The designer wants to assign objects to agents that possess specific traits, but the allocation can only be conditioned on the willingness to pay and on observable characteristics. I solve for the optimal mechanism. The choice between market or non-market mechanisms depends on ...

This paper develops a real options model of imperfect competition with asymmetric information that analyzes firms’ exit decisions. Optimal exit decision is linked to firm characteristics such as financial leverage and efficiency. The model shows that informational asymmetries between product market rivals can lead more efficient and less leveraged firms to leave the product market prematurely. ...

In this paper, we use p-best response sets—a set-valued extension of p-dominance—in order to provide a new sufficient condition for the robustness of equilibria to incomplete information: if there exists a set S which is a p-best response set with ∑I i=1 pi < 1, and there exists a unique correlated equilibrium μ∗ whose support is in S then μ∗ is a robust Nash equilibrium. © 2005 Published by El...