In a Vickrey auction, if one bidder can invest to increase his value, the combined mechanism including investments is still fully optimal. By contrast, for any β 1, there exist monotone allocation rules that guarantee a fraction β of the allocative optimum in the worst case, but such that the...

We introduce extended proper equilibrium, which refines proper equilibrium (Myerson, 1978) by adding across-player restrictions on trembles. This refinement coincides with proper equilibrium in games with two players but adds new restrictions in games with three or more players. One implication...

In complex environments, it is challenging to learn enough about the underlying characteristics of transactions so as to design the best institutions to efficiently generate gains from trade. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence has emerged as an important tool that allows market designers...

Prediction markets are markets for contracts that yield payments based on the outcome of an uncertain future event, such as a presidential election. Using these markets as forecasting tools could substantially improve decision making in the private and public sectors. We argue that U.S....

When a job-seeker and an employer meet, find a prospective surplus, and bargain over the wage, conditions in the outside labor market, including especially unemployment, may be irrelevant. The job-seeker's threat point in the bargain is to delay bargaining, not to terminate bargaining and resume...

A simplified mechanism is a direct mechanism modified by restricting the set of reports or bids. An example is the auction used to place ads on Internet search pages, in which each advertiser bids a single price to determine the allocation of eight or more ad positions on a page. If a simplified...