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 payoff 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 payoff types receive the same allocation. We show that ex post incentive compatibility and robust measurability are necessary and sufficient for robust virtual implementation.
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Length: 53 pages Date of creation: Jun 2007 Date of revision:
Jan 2009 Publication status: Published in Theoretical Economics (2009), 4: 45-88 Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1609rr
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
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Philippe Jehiel & Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn & Benny Moldovanu & William R. Zame, 2006.
"The Limits of ex post Implementation,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 74(3), pages 585-610, 05.
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