We study intermediaries who seek to maximize gains from trade in bilateral negotiations. Intermediaries are players: they cannot commit to act against their objective function and deny, in some cases, trade they believe to be beneficial. This impairs their ability to assist the parties relative...

The endowment and attachment effect are empirically well-documented in bilateral trade situations. Yet, the theoretical literature has so far failed to formally identify these effects. We fill this gap by introducing expectations-based loss aversion, which can explain both effects, into the...

We extend the equivalence between Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation established by Gershkov et al. (Econometrica, 2013) to environments with non-linear utilities satisfying the average single-crossing property and the convex-valued assumption. The new equivalence result produces...

We introduce a general class of simplicity standards that vary the foresight abilities required of agents in extensive-form games. Rather than planning for the entire future of a game, agents are presumed to be able to plan only for those histories they view as simple from their current...

The endowment and attachment effect are empirically well-documented in bilateral trade situations. Yet, the theoretical literature has so far failed to formally identify these effects. We ftll this gap by introducing expectations-based loss aversion, which can explain both effects, into the...

The endowment and attachment effect are empirically well-documented in bilateral trade situations. Yet, the theoretical literature has so far failed to formally identify these effects. We fill this gap by introducing expectations-based loss aversion, which can explain both effects, into the...

This study explores mechanism design with allocation-based social preferences. Agents' social preferences and private payoffs are all subject to asymmetric information. We assume quasi-linear utility and independent types. We show how the asymmetry of information about agents' social preferences...

This paper provides a complete characterization of equilibria in a game-theoretic version of Rothschild and Stiglitz's (1976) model of competitive insurance. I allow for stochastic contract offers by insurance firms and show that a unique symmetric equilibrium always exists. Exact conditions...

This paper generalizes a conceptual insight in dynamic contracting with quasilin- ear payoffs: the principal does not need to pay any information rents for extract- ing the agent’s “new” private information obtained after signing the contract. This is shown in a general model in which the...

How should a group of people decide to allocate a task that has to be done but is not adequately rewarded? This paper finds an optimal mechanism for the private provision of a public service in an environment without monetary transfers. All members of the group have the same cost of providing...