We show that, in environments with independent private values and transferable utility, a privately informed principal can implement a contract that is ex-ante optimal for her. As an application, we consider a bilateral exchange environment (Myerson and Satterthwaite, 1983) in which the...

Zheng has proposed a seller-optimal auction for (asymmetric) independent-privatevalue environments where inter-bidder resale is possible. Zheng's construction requires novel conditions - Resale Monotonicity, Transitivity, and Invariance - on the bidders' value distribution profile. The only...

This note considers a bargaining environment with two-sided asymmetric information and quasilinear preferences in which parties select bargaining mechanism after learning their valuations. I demonstrate that sometimes the buyer achieves a higher ex-ante payoff if the bargaining mechanism is...

In a principal-agent model with hidden information and no monetary transfers, I establish the Veto-Power Principle: any incentive-compatible outcome can be implemented through veto-based delegation with an endogenously chosen default decision. This result demonstrates the exact nature of...

This paper provides an explanation for the frequently observed phenomenon of 'inefficient micromanagement'. I show that a supervisor may get comprehensively involved into activities of a subordinate although a better option of delegation is available. This inefficiency persists in the absence of...

We study relative performance of stochastic and deterministic mechanisms in a principal-agent model with hidden information and no monetary transfers. We present an example in which stochastic mechanisms perform strictly better than deterministic ones and can implement any outcome arbitrarily...

This paper studies optimal decision rules for a decision maker who can consult two experts in an environment without monetary payments. This extends the previous work by Holmström (1984) and Alonso and Matouschek (2008) who consider environments with one expert. In order to derive optimal...