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...

We study the informed-principal problem in a bilateral asymmetric information trading setting with interdependent values and quasi-linear utilities. The informed seller proposes a mechanism and voluntarily certifies information about the good's characteristics. When the set of certifiable...

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 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...