IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2201.00923.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Robust Private Supply of a Public Good

Author

Listed:
  • Wanchang Zhang

Abstract

We study the mechanism design problem of selling a public good to a group of agents by a principal in the correlated private value environment. We assume the principal only knows the expectations of the agents' values, but does not know the joint distribution of the values. The principal evaluates a mechanism by the worst-case expected revenue over joint distributions that are consistent with the known expectations. We characterize maxmin public good mechanisms among dominant-strategy incentive compatible and ex-post individually rational mechanisms for the two-agent case and for a special $N$-agent ($N>2$) case.

Suggested Citation

  • Wanchang Zhang, 2022. "Robust Private Supply of a Public Good," Papers 2201.00923, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2201.00923
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.00923
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kim-Sau Chung & J.C. Ely, 2007. "Foundations of Dominant-Strategy Mechanisms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 447-476.
    2. Çağıl Koçyiğit & Garud Iyengar & Daniel Kuhn & Wolfram Wiesemann, 2020. "Distributionally Robust Mechanism Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 159-189, January.
    3. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2016. "Informationally Robust Optimal Auction Design," Working Papers 084_2016, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Econometric Research Program..
    4. Werner Güth & Martin Hellwig, 1986. "The private supply of a public good," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 121-159, December.
    5. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2017. "First‐Price Auctions With General Information Structures: Implications for Bidding and Revenue," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 107-143, January.
    6. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Robust Mechanism Design," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 2, pages 49-96, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Songzi Du, 2018. "Robust Mechanisms Under Common Valuation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1569-1588, September.
    8. Chen, Yi-Chun & Li, Jiangtao, 2018. "Revisiting the foundations of dominant-strategy mechanisms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 294-317.
    9. Wanchang Zhang, 2021. "Correlation-Robust Optimal Auctions," Papers 2105.04697, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    10. Gabriel Carroll, 2017. "Robustness and Separation in Multidimensional Screening," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 453-488, March.
    11. Jonathan Libgober & Xiaosheng Mu, 2021. "Informational Robustness in Intertemporal Pricing [Political Disagreement and Information in Elections]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(3), pages 1224-1252.
    12. Wanchang Zhang, 2021. "Random Double Auction: A Robust Bilateral Trading Mechanism," Papers 2105.05427, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    13. Takuro Yamashita & Shuguang Zhu, 2022. "On the Foundations of Ex Post Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 494-514, November.
    14. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    15. Benjamin Brooks & Songzi Du, 2021. "Optimal Auction Design With Common Values: An Informationally Robust Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(3), pages 1313-1360, May.
    16. Ethan Che, 2019. "Distributionally Robust Optimal Auction Design under Mean Constraints," Papers 1911.07103, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2022.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wanchang Zhang, 2022. "Information-Robust Optimal Auctions," Papers 2205.04137, arXiv.org.

    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. He, Wei & Li, Jiangtao, 2022. "Correlation-robust auction design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    2. Wanchang Zhang, 2021. "Random Double Auction: A Robust Bilateral Trading Mechanism," Papers 2105.05427, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    3. Wanchang Zhang, 2021. "Correlation-Robust Optimal Auctions," Papers 2105.04697, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    4. Satoshi Nakada & Shmuel Nitzan & Takashi Ui, 2022. "Robust Voting under Uncertainty," Working Papers on Central Bank Communication 038, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    5. Suzdaltsev, Alex, 2022. "Distributionally robust pricing in independent private value auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    6. Wanchang Zhang, 2022. "Auctioning Multiple Goods without Priors," Papers 2204.13726, arXiv.org.
    7. Tang, Rui & Zhang, Mu, 2021. "Maxmin implementation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    8. Chen, Yi-Chun & Yang, Xiangqian, 2023. "Information design in optimal auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    9. Benjamin Brooks & Songzi Du, 2021. "Optimal Auction Design With Common Values: An Informationally Robust Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(3), pages 1313-1360, May.
    10. Jonathan Libgober & Xiaosheng Mu, 2022. "Coasian Dynamics under Informational Robustness," Papers 2202.04616, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
    11. Takuro Yamashita & Shuguang Zhu, 2022. "On the Foundations of Ex Post Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 494-514, November.
    12. Tilman Börgers, 2017. "(No) Foundations of dominant-strategy mechanisms: a comment on Chung and Ely (2007)," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 21(2), pages 73-82, June.
    13. Ethan Che, 2019. "Distributionally Robust Optimal Auction Design under Mean Constraints," Papers 1911.07103, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2022.
    14. Çağıl Koçyiğit & Garud Iyengar & Daniel Kuhn & Wolfram Wiesemann, 2020. "Distributionally Robust Mechanism Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 159-189, January.
    15. Pathikrit Basu, 2023. "Mechanism design with model specification," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(2), pages 263-276, August.
    16. In-Koo Cho & Jonathan Libgober, 2022. "Learning Underspecified Models," Papers 2207.10140, arXiv.org.
    17. Sosung Baik & Sung-Ha Hwang, 2022. "Revenue Comparisons of Auctions with Ambiguity Averse Sellers," Papers 2211.12669, arXiv.org.
    18. Yeon-Koo Che & Weijie Zhong, 2021. "Robustly Optimal Mechanisms for Selling Multiple Goods," Papers 2105.02828, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    19. Amine Allouah & Omar Besbes, 2020. "Prior-Independent Optimal Auctions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4417-4432, October.
    20. Pham, Hien & Yamashita, Takuro, 2021. "Auction Design with Heterogeneous Priors," TSE Working Papers 21-1260, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Mar 2023.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2201.00923. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.