In a general interdependent preference environment, we characterize when two payoff types can be distinguished by their rationalizable strategic choices without any prior knowledge of their beliefs and higher order beliefs. We show that two types are strategically distinguishable if and only if they satisfy a separability condition. The separability condition for each agent essentially requires that there is not too much interdependence in preferences across agents. A social choice function -- mapping payoff type profiles to outcomes -- can be robustly virtually implemented if there exists a mechanism such that every equilibrium on every type space achieves an outcome arbitrarily close to the social choice function: this definition is equivalent to requiring virtual implementation in iterated deletion of strategies that are strictly dominated for all beliefs. The social choice function is robustly measurable if strategically indistinguishable types receive the same allocation. We show that ex post incentive compatibility and robust measurability are necessary and sufficient for robust virtual implementation.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 49 pages Date of creation: Jun 2007 Date of revision:
Apr 2008 Publication status: Published in Theoretical Economics (2009), 4: 45-88 Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1609r
Find related papers by JEL classification: C79 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Other D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)