We introduce intention-based social preferences into a mechanism design framework with independent private values and quasilinear payoffs. For the case where the designer has no information about the intensity of social preferences, we provide conditions under which mechanisms which have been designed under the assumption that agents are selfish can still be implemented. For the case where prec...

We prove a general possibility result for collective decision problems where individual allocations are one-dimensional, preferences are single-peaked (strictly convex), and feasible allocation profiles cover a closed convex set. Special cases include the celebrated median voter theorem ([10], [21]) and the division of a non disposable commodity by the uniform rationing rule ([47]). We construc...

Models of choice where agents see others as less sophisticated than themselves have significantly different, sometimes more accurate, predictions in games than does Nash equilibrium. When it comes to the maximal set of functions that are implementable in mechanism design, however, they turn out to have surprisingly similar implications. Focusing on single-valued rules, we discuss the role and i...

Mechanisms design has traditionally been a manual endeavor. In 2002, Conitzer and Sandholm introduced the automated mechanism design (AMD) approach, where the mechanism is computationally created for the specific problem instance at hand. This has several advantages: 1) it can yield better mechanisms than the ones known to date, 2) it applies beyond the problem classes studied manually to date,...

Game theory is becoming central to the design and analysis of computational mechanisms in which multiple entities interact strategically. The tools of mechanism design are used extensively to engineer incentives for truth revelation into resource allocation (e.g. combinatorial auctions) and preference aggregation protocols (e.g. voting). We argue that mechanism design can also be useful in the ...

Multi-contracting practices prevail in many organizations be they public (governments) or private (markets). This article surveys the literature on common agency, a major example of such multi-contracting settings. I first highlight some specific features of common agency games that distinguish them from centralized contracting. Then, I review the tools needed to describe allocations which are ...

We consider mechanism design problems in which agents perceive Knightian uncertainty. Uncertainty is formalized using incomplete preferences, as in Bewley (1986). Without completeness, individual decision making depends on a set of beliefs, and an action is preferred to another if and only if it has larger expected utility for all beliefs in this set. We consider two natural notions of incentiv...

Game theory provides methods to predict the outcome of a given game. Mechanism design concerns the reverse question: given some desirable outcome, can we design a game which produces it? Formally, the environment is hA,N,Θi , where A is a set of feasible and verifiable alternatives or outcomes, N = {1, ..., n} is a set of agents, and Θ is a set of possible states of the world. We focus on priva...