The relevance of private information in mechanism design

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Neeman, Z
• 署名单位: Boston University; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2003.09.001
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 55-77
• 关键词: Surplus extraction; Information rents; mechanism design; private information; correlated infonnation; public goods

摘要

Recent results in mechanism design show that as long as agents have correlated private information and are sufficiently risk neutral, it is possible to design mechanisms that leave agents with arbitrarily small information rents. We show that these full-rent-extraction results hinge on the implicit assumption that the agents' beliefs uniquely determine their preferences. We present an example of the voluntary provision of a public good in which this assumption is relaxed, and consequently, even in highly correlated environments, if agents' beliefs do not uniquely determine their preferences, then the extraction of the agents' entire information rents is impossible. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.