In some mechanism design problems, finite-type spaces may be natural ones to consider, yet the current literature is dominated by analyses of continuous-type spaces. This probably derives from the intellectual dominance of the early work in this area. Here we present an analysis of the...

We study a mechanism designer’s trade-off between the complexity level and optimality level of a mechanism. While our techniques apply to a much larger class of mechanism design problems, we focus on the quality differentiation model of Mussa and Rosen (1978), restricting the monopolist to...

We re-visit the single-agent mechanism design problem with quasilinear preferences, but we assume that the principal knowingly operates on the basis of only an approximate type space rather than the (potentially complex) truth. We propose a two-step scheme, the profit-participation mechanism,...

We analyze nonlinear pricing with finite information. A seller offers a menu to a continuum of buyers with a continuum of possible valuations. The menu is limited to offering a finite number of choices representing a finite communication capacity between buyer and seller. We identify necessary...

This paper studies the cost requirement for two-agent collusion-proof mechanism design. Unlike the existing results for general environments with three or more agents, it is shown that collusive behavior cannot be prevented freely in two-agent nonlinear pricing environments with correlated...

We analyze a nonlinear pricing model with limited information. Each buyer can purchase a large variety, d, of goods. His preference for each good is represented by a scalar and his preference over d goods is represented by a d-dimensional vector. The type space of each buyer is given by a...

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This paper, forthcoming in Journal of Economic Surveys, provides an elementary, non-technical, survey of auction theory, by introducing and describing some of the critical papers in the subject. (The most important of these are reproduced in a companion book, The Economic Theory of Auctions,...

This is a preliminary draft of an Invited Symposium paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society to be held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and standard economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can...