We define and investigate a property of mechanisms that we call "strategic simplicity", and that is meant to capture the idea that, in strategically simple mechanisms, strategic choices are easy. We define a mechanism to be strategically simple if strategic choices can be based on first-order...

We consider a general social choice environment that has multiple agents, a finite set of alternatives, independent types, and atomless type distribution. We show that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism, there exists an equivalent deterministic mechanism that (1) is Bayesian...

We study a robust version of the single-unit auction problem. The auctioneer has confidence in her estimate of the marginal distribution of a generic bidder's valuation, but does not have reliable information about the joint distribution. In this setting, we analyze the performance of...

We study a general social choice environment that has multiple agents, a finite set of alternatives, and independent and diffuse information. We show that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism, there exists a deterministic mechanism that i) is Bayesian incentive compatible; ii) delivers...

We study the design of auctions when the auctioneer has limited statistical information about the joint distribution of the bidders' valuations. More specifically, we consider an auctioneer who has an estimate of the marginal distribution of a generic bidder's valuation but does not have...