This paper obtains finite analogues to propositions that a previous literature obtained about the informational efficiency of mechanisms whose possible messages form a continuum. Upon reaching an equilibrium message, to which all persons “agree”, a mechanism obtains an action appropriate to...

In a two-agent setting, one agent ("landlord") seeks to maximize his residual gain, i.e., that part of output remaining after payment of a reward to the other agent ("worker"). The reward must be a function of the worker's output since his effort cannot be directly observed, and the landlord...

It is shown that if an economy's participants cannot be separated into groups across which there are no potentially conflicting interests--i.e., if the economy is "indecomposable"--then every continuous truth-dominant allocation mechanism will attain nonoptimal allocations on an open dense set...