We characterize the set of extreme points of monotonic functions that are either majorized by a given function f or themselves majorize f and show that these extreme points play a crucial role in many economic design problems. Our main results show that each extreme point is uniquely...

We characterize the set of extreme points of monotonic functions that are either majorized by a given function f or themselves majorize f and show that these extreme points play a crucial role in many economic design problems. Our main results show that each extreme...

We consider truthful implementation of the socially efficient allocation in an independent private-value environment in which agents receive private information over time. We propose a suitable generalization of the pivot mechanism, based on the marginal contribution of each agent. In the...

The authors consider a single consumer buying a stream of goods from different sellers over time. The true value of each seller's product is initially unknown. Additional information is obtained by experimentation. For exogenous prices, this is a multiarmed bandit problem. The innovation here is...

We consider a general mechanism design setting where each agent can acquire (covert) information before participating in the mechanism. The central question is whether a mechanism exists that provides the efficient incentives for information acquisition ex-ante and implements the efficient...

The mechanism design literature assumes too much common knowledge of the environment among the players and planner. We relax this assumption by studying mechanism design on richer type spaces. Copyright The Econometric Society 2005.