We study a mechanism design problem under the assumption that renegotiation cannot be prevented. We investigate what kind of equilibria of which mechanisms are renegotiation-proof under a variety of renegotiation procedures, and which social choice functions can be implemented in a way that is...

We consider a general economy, where agents have private information about their types. Types can be multi-dimensional and potentially interdependent. We show that, if the interim distribution of types is common knowledge (the exact number of agents for each type is known), then a mechanism...

We show that a solution to the problem of mechanism selection by an informed principal exists in a large class of environments with “generalized private values”: the agents’ payoff functions are independent of the principal’s type. The solution is an extension of Maskin and Tirole’s...

I study a principal's optimal choice of constraint for an agent participating in an auction (or auction-like allocation mechanism). I give necessary and sufficient conditions on the principal's beliefs about the value of the item for a simple budget constraint to be the optimal contract. The...

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 quasilinear payoffs: the principal does not need to pay any information rents for extracting the agent's 'new' private information obtained after signing the contract. This is shown in a general model in which the agent's...

The Mirrleesian model of income taxation restricts attention to simple allocation mechanism with no strategic interdependence, i.e., the optimal labor supply of any one individual does not depend on the labor supply of others. It has been argued by Piketty (1993) that this restriction is...

We study a principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection. Risk-neutral agents with limited liability have arbitrary private information about the distribution of outputs and the cost of effort. We show that under a multiplicative separability condition, the optimal mechanism...

Individuals use narratives as rationales or justifications to make their claims more convincing. I provide a general framework for partial verifiability based on narratives. Narratives give many reasons and arguments. The receiver derives the message’s meaning by aggregating these reasons; her...

This paper considers a multi-period setting where a monopolist, with short-term commitment, rents one unit of a durable good to a single consumer in every period. The consumer's valuation constitutes his private information and remains constant over time. By using a mechanism design approach,...