We study mechanism design in dynamic quasilinear environments where private information arrives over time and decisions are made over multiple periods. We make three contributions. First, we provide a necessary condition for incentive compatibility that takes the form of an envelope formula for...

This paper examines the problem of how to design incentive-compatible mechanisms in environments in which the agents' private information evolves stochastically over time and in which decisions have to be made in each period. The environments we consider are fairly general in that the agents'...

two mechanisms that implement the same allocation rule must yield the same expected payoffs to the agents and hence the same expected revenue regardless of the transfer scheme and of the information disclosed by the mechanism to the agents. We then use the result as a tool for designing profit...

These notes examine the problem of how to extend envelope theorems to infinite-horizon dynamic mechanism design settings, with an application to the design of "bandit auctions."

We examine the design of incentive-compatible screening mechanisms for dynamic environments in which the agents types follow a (possibly non-Markov) stochastic process, decisions may be made over time and may affect the type process, and payoffs need not be time-separable. We derive a formula...

These notes examine the problem of how to extend envelope theorems to infinite-horizon dynamic mechanism design settings, with an application to the design of "bandit auctions."

We argue that a patent system makes collusion among innovators more difficult. Our simple argument is based on two properties of the patent system. First, a patent not only protects against infringement but also against retaliation by former collusion members. Second, a deviator has an equal...

We study repeated Bayesian n-player games in which the players' privately known types evolve according an irreducible Markov chain. Our main result shows that, with communication, any Pareto-efficient payoff vector above a stationary minmax value can be approximated arbitrarily closely in a...