IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/ucsdec/qt4748b7r2.html

Efficient mechanisms for level-k bilateral trading

Author

Listed:
  • Crawford, Vincent P

Abstract

This paper revisits Myerson and Satterthwaite's (1983) classic analysis of mechanism design for bilateral trading, replacing equilibrium with a level-k model of strategic thinking and focusing on direct mechanisms. The revelation principle fails for level-k models, so restricting attention to direct mechanisms and imposing incentive-compatibility are not without loss of generality. If, however, only direct, level-k-incentive-compatible mechanisms are feasible and traders' levels are observable, Myerson and Satterthwaite's characterization of mechanisms that maximize traders' total surplus subject to incentive constraints generalizes qualitatively to level-k models. If only direct, level-k-incentive-compatible mechanisms are feasible but traders' levels are not observable, generically a particular posted-price mechanism maximizes traders' total expected surplus subject to incentive constraints. If direct, non-level-k-incentive-compatible mechanisms are feasible and traders best respond to them, total expected surplus-maximizing mechanisms may take completely different forms.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Crawford, Vincent P, 2021. "Efficient mechanisms for level-k bilateral trading," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt4748b7r2, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt4748b7r2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/4748b7r2.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jean-Michel Benkert, 2025. "Bilateral trade with loss-averse agents," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 79(2), pages 519-560, March.
    2. Li, Fei & Song, Yangbo & Zhao, Mofei, 2023. "Global manipulation by local obfuscation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    3. de Clippel, Geoffroy & Saran, Rene & Serrano, Roberto, 2023. "Continuous level-k mechanism design," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 481-501.
    4. Malachy James Gavan & Antonio Penta, 2022. "Safe Implementation," Working Papers 1363, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. Gavan, Malachy James & Penta, Antonio, 2022. "Safe Implementation," TSE Working Papers 22-1369, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    6. Rivera Mora, Ernesto, 2024. "Mechanism design with belief-dependent preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    7. Lin, Po-Hsuan & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2024. "Cognitive hierarchies for games in extensive form," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    8. Giacomo Rubbini, 2023. "Mechanism Design without Rational Expectations," Papers 2305.07472, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    9. Kneeland, Terri, 2022. "Mechanism design with level-k types: Theory and an application to bilateral trade," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    10. Ballester, Coralio & Rodriguez-Moral, Antonio & Vorsatz, Marc, 2024. "Cognitive reflection in experimental anchored guessing games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 179-195.
    11. Possajennikov, Alex & Saran, Rene, 2023. "(In)efficiency in private value bargaining with naive players: Theory and experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 216(C), pages 42-61.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact

    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:cdl:ucsdec:qt4748b7r2. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deucsus.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.