IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/essewp/dr-19005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Informed Principal Model with Common Values

Author

Listed:
  • Anastasios, Dosis

    (ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School)

Abstract

This paper reconsiders the general informed principal model with unilateral private information and common values. First, it identifies some fundamental properties of the Rothschild-Stiglitz-Wilson (RSW) allocation (i.e., the undominated for the principal allocation within the set of incentive compatible and individually rational for the agent type by type allocations). Based on these properties: (i) it constructs a more robust, and perhaps simpler, proof of the "if part" of Theorem 1 (i.e., the main result) of Maskin and Tirole (1992), and, (ii) it establishes that if the principal is restricted to offering mechanisms in which only she makes announcements (e.g., direct revelation mechanisms), then the conclusion of that theorem holds even in environments in which the RSW allocation is not interim efficient relative to any non-degenerate beliefs. Second, it provides a sufficient condition that allows for the complete characterisation of the set of equilibrium allocations even in environments in which single-crossing is not satisfied.

Suggested Citation

  • Anastasios, Dosis, 2019. "On the Informed Principal Model with Common Values," ESSEC Working Papers WP1905, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-19005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal-essec.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02130454/document
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B, 1983. "Mechanism Design by an Informed Principal," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(6), pages 1767-1797, November.
    2. Balkenborg, Dieter & Makris, Miltiadis, 2015. "An undominated mechanism for a class of informed principal problems with common values," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 918-958.
    3. Vasiliki Skreta, 2011. "On the informed seller problem: optimal information disclosure," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 15(1), pages 1-36, March.
    4. Michael Rothschild & Joseph Stiglitz, 1976. "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(4), pages 629-649.
    5. David Martimort & Wilfried Sand‐Zantman, 2006. "Signalling and the design of delegated management contracts for public utilities," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 763-782, December.
    6. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 1990. "The Principal-Agent Relationship with an Informed Principal: The Case of Private Values," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(2), pages 379-409, March.
    7. Fleckinger, Pierre, 2007. "Informed principal and countervailing incentives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 240-244, February.
    8. Yilankaya, Okan, 1999. "A Note on the Seller's Optimal Mechanism in Bilateral Trade with Two-Sided Incomplete Information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 267-271, July.
    9. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    10. David Martimort & Jean‐Christophe Poudou & Wilfried Sand‐Zantman, 2010. "Contracting For An Innovation Under Bilateral Asymmetric Information," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 324-348, June.
    11. Tymofiy Mylovanov & Thomas Tröger, 2014. "Mechanism Design by an Informed Principal: Private Values with Transferable Utility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1668-1707.
    12. Beaudry, Paul, 1994. "Why an Informed Principal May Leave Rents to an Agent," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(4), pages 821-832, November.
    13. Koessler, Frédéric & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2016. "Informed seller with taste heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 456-471.
    14. Eric Maskin, 1999. "Nash Equilibrium and Welfare Optimality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 23-38.
    15. Severinov, Sergei, 2008. "An efficient solution to the informed principal problem," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 114-133, July.
    16. Partha Dasgupta & Peter Hammond & Eric Maskin, 1979. "The Implementation of Social Choice Rules: Some General Results on Incentive Compatibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(2), pages 185-216.
    17. Wilson, Charles, 1977. "A model of insurance markets with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 167-207, December.
    18. Pierre Fleckinger, 2007. "Informed Principal and Countervailing Incentives," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00607075, HAL.
    19. Guofu Tan, 1996. "Optimal Procurement Mechanisms for an Informed Buyer," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(3), pages 699-716, August.
    20. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 1992. "The Principal-Agent Relationship with an Informed Principal, II: Common Values," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(1), pages 1-42, January.
    21. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    22. Cella, Michela, 2008. "Informed principal with correlation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 433-456, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bedard, Nicholas C., 2017. "The strategically ignorant principal," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 548-561.
    2. Mylovanov, Timofiy & Troger, Thomas E., 2012. "Informed principal problems in generalized private values environments," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), September.
    3. Koessler, Frederic & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2019. "Selling with evidence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(2), May.
    4. Nishimura, Takeshi, 2022. "Informed principal problems in bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    5. Wagner, Christoph & Mylovanov, Tymofiy & Tröger, Thomas, 2015. "Informed-principal problem with moral hazard, risk neutrality, and no limited liability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 280-289.
    6. Koessler, Frédéric & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2016. "Informed seller with taste heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 456-471.
    7. Mylovanov, Tymofiy & Tröger, Thomas, 2008. "Optimal Auction Design and Irrelevance of Private Information," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 21/2008, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    8. Xin Zhao, 2023. "Auction design by an informed seller: A foundation of reserve price signalling," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 1161-1190, August.
    9. Thomas Troeger & Tymofiy Mylovanov, 2010. "Optimal Auction Design and Irrelevance of Privacy of Information," 2010 Meeting Papers 1039, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    10. Takeshi Nishimura, 2019. "Informed Principal Problems in Bilateral Trading," Papers 1906.10311, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2022.
    11. Davoodalhosseini, Seyed Mohammadreza, 2019. "Constrained efficiency with adverse selection and directed search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 568-593.
    12. Francesco Giovannoni & Toomas Hinnosaar, 2022. "Pricing Novel Goods," Papers 2208.04985, arXiv.org.
    13. Nicholas Charles Bedard, 2017. "Contracts in informed-principal problems with moral hazard," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 5(1), pages 21-34, April.
    14. Balkenborg, Dieter & Makris, Miltiadis, 2015. "An undominated mechanism for a class of informed principal problems with common values," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 918-958.
    15. Dimitris Kostamis & Damian R. Beil & Izak Duenyas, 2009. "Total-Cost Procurement Auctions: Impact of Suppliers' Cost Adjustments on Auction Format Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(12), pages 1985-1999, December.
    16. Vasiliki Skreta, 2011. "On the informed seller problem: optimal information disclosure," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 15(1), pages 1-36, March.
    17. Dongsoo Shin & S. Andrew Starbird, 2009. "Risk Taking as Self Discipline in Contractual Relationships," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 289-304.
    18. Vasconcelos, Luís, 2017. "A signaling-based theory of contractual commitment to relationships," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 123-138.
    19. Markus Brunnermeier & Rohit Lamba & Carlos Segura-Rodriguez, 2020. "Inverse Selection," Working Papers 2020-50, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    20. Heiko Karle & Christian Staat, 2013. "Signaling Quality with Initially Reduced Royalty Rates," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2013-44, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mechanism design; Informed principal; Rothschild-Stiglitz-Wilson allocation; Perfect Bayesian equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-19005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sophie Magnanou (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.