This paper considers the optimal degree of monetary-discretion when the central bank conducts policy based on its private information about the state of the economy and is unable to commit. Society seeks to maximize social welfare by imposing restrictions on the central bank's actions over time,...

This note constructs an efficient mechanism for finding the best candidate for a committee from a sequence of potential candidates. Committee members have independent private values information about the quality of the candidate. The mechanism selects the best candidate according to the standard...

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...

This paper shows that the possibility of collusion between an agent and a supervisor imposes no restrictions on the set of implementable social choice functions (SCF) and associated payoff vectors. Any SCF and any payoff profile that are implementable if the supervisor's information was public...

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...

A mediator, with no prior information and no control over the market protocol, attempts to redesign the information structure in the market by running an information intermediation mechanism with transfers that first elicits information from an agent, and then discloses information to another...

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...

We analyze the canonical nonlinear pricing model with limited information. A seller offers a menu with a finite number of choices to a continuum of buyers with a continuum of possible valuations. By revealing an underlying connection to quantization theory, we derive the optimal finite menu for...

Truthtelling is often viewed as focal in direct mechanisms. We introduce two new notions of robust implementation based on the premise that society may be composed of "primitive'' agents who, whenever confronted with a strategy profile, anchor to truthtelling and make a limited number of...