We show that, in environments with independent private values and transferable utility, a privately informed principal can solve her mechanism selection problem by implementing an allocation that is ex-ante optimal for her. No type of the principal can gain from proposing an alternative...

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We demonstrate that all social choice rules that generate a nonnegative ex-ante surplus, including ex-post efficient ones, can generically be implemented via such mechanisms. The...

We show that a solution to the problem of mechanism selection by an informed principal exists in a large class of environments with “generalized private values”: the agents’ payoff functions are independent of the principal’s type. The solution is an extension of Maskin and Tirole’s...

We consider the situation where the owner of some good wants to sell the good to one of several potential buyers. We assume that the owner possesses private information about the buyers' valuations of the good, and analyze this model as an informed principal mechanism design model. In an...

We present a common value mechanism design model for an informed principal where only the principal has private information, but her one-dimensional private information is allowed to be distributed according to any probability measure. For this model we characterize the set of pure-strategy...

We propose a theory explaining the shape of contracts between local governments and the contractors they hire to run public facilities on their behalf. Governments are privately informed over the quality of the facility and risk-averse while risk-neutral contractors are subject to a moral hazard...

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We demonstrate that all social choice rules that generate a nonnegative ex-ante surplus, including ex-post efficient ones, can generically be implemented via such mechanisms for any...

In a class of informed principal problems with common values often used in applications we de…fine a particular mechanism which we call the assured allocation. It is always undominated, i.e. efficient among the different types of the principal. We show it is a perfect Bayesian equilibrium...