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...

This paper studies markets for heterogeneous goods using mechanism-design theory. For each combination of desirable properties, I derive an assignment process with these properties in the form of a corresponding direct-revelation game, or I show that it does not exist. Each participant's utility...

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...

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...

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 investigates the optimal design of incentives when agents distort probabilities. We show that the type of probability distortion displayed by the agent and its degree determine whether an incentivecompatible contract can be implemented, the strength of the incentives included in the...

The marginal cost of effort often increases as effort is exerted. In a dynamic moral hazard setting, dynamically increasing costs create information asymmetry. This paper characterizes the optimal contract and helps explain the popular yet thus far puzzling use of non-linear incentives, for...

Patents are a useful but imperfect reward for innovation. In sectors like pharmaceuticals, where monopoly distortions seem particularly severe, there is growing international political pressure to identify alternatives to patents that could lower prices. Innovation prizes and other non-patent...

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...

We study Bayesian mechanism design in situations where agents' information may be multi-dimensional, concentrating on mechanisms that lead to efficient allocations. Our main result is that a generalization of the well-known Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism maximizes the planner's "revenue'' among...