Why do some incomplete information markets feature intermediaries while others do not? I study the allocation of two goods in an incomplete information setting with a single principal, multiple agents with unit demand, and interdependent valuations. I construct a novel dynamic mechanism...

McAfee and Reny (1992) have given a necessary and sufficient condition for full surplus extraction in naive type spaces with a continuum of payoff types. We generalize their characterization to arbitrary abstract type spaces and to the universal type space and show that in each setting, full...

McAfee and Reny (1992) have given a necessary and sufficient condition for full surplus extraction in models with a continuum of types. We interpret their condition as significantly stronger version of the requirement of injectiveness of the function mapping abstract types into beliefs and prove...

We analyze a setting common in privatizations, public tenders, and takeovers in which the ex post efficient allocation, i.e., the first best, is not implementable. Our first main result is that the open ascending auction is not second best because it is prone to rushes, i.e., all active bidders...

I study a mechanism design problem of allocating a single good to an agent when the mechanism is followed by a post-mechanism game (aftermarket) played between the agent and a third-party. The aftermarket is beyond the direct control of the designer. However, she can influence the information...

Neeman (2004) and Heifetz and Neeman (2006) have shown that, in auctions with incomplete information about payoffs, full surplus extraction is only possible if agents’ beliefs about other agents are fully informative about their own payoff parameters. They argue that the set of...

It is well-known that the ability of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism to implement efficient outcomes for private value choice problems does not extend to interdependent value problems. When an agent's type affects other agents' utilities, it may not be incentive compatible for him to...

For a repeated procurement problem, we compare two stylized negotiating cultures which differ in how the buyer uses an entrant to exert pressure on the incumbent resembling U.S. style and Japanese style procurement. In each period, the suppliers are privately informed about their production...

Governments must usually take policy decisions with an imperfect knowledge of the economic actors' type or the actors' effort level. These issues are addressed within the framework of classic adverse selection or moral hazard models. I discuss in this paper how would the government’s and the...

I study the interaction between optimal procurement and outsourcing of production in small industries. First, two sellers decide about outsourcing. By outsourcing, a seller loses information about the costs of producing to his supplier. Then the buyer designs the procurement mechanism and...