Multiplicity of equilibria and the dependence on strong common knowledge assumptions are well-known problems in mechanism design. We address them by studying full implementation via transfer schemes, under general restrictions on agents' beliefs. We show that incentive-compatible transfers ensure uniqueness—and hence full implementation—if they induce sufficiently weak strategic externalities. We then design transfers for full implementation by using information on beliefs in order to weaken the strategic externalities of the baseline canonical transfers. Our results rely on minimal restrictions on agents' beliefs, specifically on moments of the distribution of types, that arise naturally in applications. (JEL D62, D82, D83)
We study robust mechanism design in environments in which agents commonly believe that others’ types are identically distributed, but we do not assume that the actual distribution is common knowledge, nor that it is known to the designer. First, we characterize all incentive compatible transfers under these assumptions. Second, we characterize the conditions under which full implementation is possible via direct mechanisms, that only elicit payoff relevant information, and the transfer schemes which achieve it whenever possible. The full implementation results obtain from showing that the problem can be transformed into one of designing a network of strategic externalities, subject to suitable constraints which are dictated by the incentive compatibility requirements.
We study efficient full implementation via transfers in unique rationalizable strategies in environments that are symmetric in two senses: first, agents display the same total level of preference interdependence; second, types are commonly known to be drawn from distributions with identical (but unknown) means. We characterize the conditions under which full efficient implementation is possible via direct mechanisms, as well as the transfer schemes that achieve it whenever possible. We discuss a further robustness property--robustness to mistaken play--and show that it uniquely selects the transfer scheme that induces an even redistribution of strategic externalities.
The literature on information aggregation predicts that market growth unambiguously reduces uncertainty about the value of traded goods. The results were developed within the classical model, which assumes that traders' values for the exchanged good are determined by fundamental (common) shocks. At the same time, design innovation in contemporaneous markets seems to exploit demand interdependence among agents with similar tastes or common information sharing (e.g., Facebook ads, the practice of customer targeting). This paper demonstrates that with heterogeneous interdependence among agents' values or noise in signals about values, opportunities to innovate in smaller or less connected (in the network-theoretic sense) markets may dominate those in larger or better connected markets. JEL Classification: D44, D82, L13, G14
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