We address the scheduling problem of reordering an existing queue into its efficient order through trade. To that end, we consider individually rational and balanced budget direct and indirect mechanisms. We show that this class of mechanisms allows us to form efficient queues provided that...

In a sequencing problem with linear time cost, Suijs (1996) proved that it is possible to achieve first best. By first best we mean that one can find mechanisms that satisfy efficiency of decision, dominant strategy incentive compatibility and budget balancedness. In this paper we show that...

In this paper we analyze sequencing situations under incomplete information where agents have interdependent costs. We first argue why Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (or VCG) mechanism fails to implement a simple sequencing problem in dominant strategies. Given this impossibility, we try to implement...

We study an adverse selection problem in which information that is imperfectly correlated with the agent's type becomes public ex post. Unbounded penalties are ruled out by assuming that the agent is wealth constrained. The following conclusions emerge. If the agent's utility is increasing in...

In mechanism design problems under incomplete information, it is generally difficult to find decision problems that are first best implementable. A decision problem under incomplete information is first best implementable if there exists a mechanism that extracts the private information and...