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...

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 probabilistic estimate of some unknown parameter, by eliciting and fusing estimates from multiple suppliers. Each of these suppliers is capable of...

In many auctions, a good match between the bidder and seller raises the value of the contract for both parties although information about the quality of the match may be incomplete. This paper examines the case in which the bidder is better informed about the quality of his match with the seller...

We analyze optimal trading mechanisms in environments where each trader owns some units of a good to be traded and may be either a seller or a buyer, depending on the realization of privately observed valuations. First, the concept of virtual valuation is extended to ex ante unidentified...

We study a problem of optimal auction design in the realistic case in which the players can collude both on the way they play in the auction and on their participation decisions. Despite the fact that the principal's opportunities for extracting payments from the agents in such a situation are...

We study the principal’s optimal response to collusion in an adverse selection environment. Building on the framework of Laffont and Martimort (1997, 2000) we advance it into several directions. First, unlike most of the literature, we study a stronger collusion when the agents can coordinate...

This paper reports on the design of a novel two-stage mechanism, based on strictly proper scoring rules, that motivates selfish rational agents to make a costly probabilistic estimate or forecast of a specified precision and report it truthfully to a centre. Our mechanism is applied in a setting...

We consider the problem faced by firms operating in a foreign country characterized by weak governance. Our focus is on extortion based on the threat of expropriation and bureaucratic harassment. The bureaucrat's bargaining power is characterized by a general extortion mechanism adapted from the...

I study a principal's optimal choice of constraint for an agent participating in an auction (or auction-like allocation mechanism). I give necessary and sufficient conditions on the principal's beliefs about the value of the item for a simple budget constraint to be the optimal contract. The...