Continuous implementation with direct revelation mechanisms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chen, Yi-Chun; Mueller-Frank, Manuel; Pai, Mallesh M.
• 署名单位: National University of Singapore; National University of Singapore; University of Navarra; IESE Business School; Rice University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2022.105422
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Continuous implementation; robust implementation; contagion; higher-order beliefs

摘要

We investigate how a principal's knowledge of agents' higher-order beliefs impacts their ability to robustly implement a given social choice function. We adapt a formulation of Oury and Tercieux (2012): a social choice function is continuously implementable if it is partially implementable for types in an initial model and nearby types. We characterize when a social choice function is truthfully continuously implementable, i.e., using game forms corresponding to direct revelation mechanisms for the initial model. Our characterization hinges on how our formalization of the notion of nearby preserves agents' higher order beliefs. If nearby types have similar higher order beliefs, truthful continuous implementation is roughly equivalent to requiring that the social choice function is implementable in strict equilibrium in the initial model, a very permissive solution concept. If they do not, then our notion is equivalent to requiring that the social choice function is implementable in unique rationalizable strategies in the initial model. Truthful continuous implementation is thus very demanding without non-trivial knowledge of agents' higher order beliefs. (C) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.