This paper reports on the design of a novel two-stage mechanism, based on strictly proper scoring rules, that allows a centre to acquire a costly forecast of a future event (such as a meteorological phenomenon) or a probabilistic estimate of a specific parameter (such as the quality of an...

I consider a situation, where the agent can acquire payoff-relevant information either before or after the contract is signed. To raise efficiency, the principal might solicit information; to retain all surplus, however, she must prevent precontractual information gathering. The following class...

[E. Maskin, \emph{Rev. Econom. Stud.} \textbf{66} (1999) 23-38] is a seminal paper in the field of mechanism design and implementation theory. [J. Moore and R. Repullo, \emph{Econometrica} \textbf{58} (1990) 1083-1099] and [B. Dutta and A. Sen, \emph{Rev. Econom. Stud.} \textbf{58} (1991)...