Redistributive Allocation Mechanisms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Akbarpour, Mohammad; Dworczak, Piotr; Kominers, Scott Duke
• 署名单位: Stanford University; Northwestern University; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/728111
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1831-1875
• 关键词: public provision; self-selection; private goods; in-kind; DESIGN; transfers; tax; cash; ECONOMICS

摘要

Many scarce public resources are allocated at below-market-clearing prices and sometimes for free. Such nonmarket mechanisms sacrifice some surplus, yet they can potentially improve equity. We develop a model of mechanism design with redistributive concerns. Agents are characterized by a privately observed willingness to pay for quality, a publicly observed label, and a social welfare weight. A market designer controls allocation and pricing of a set of objects of heterogeneous quality and maximizes the expectation of a welfare function. The designer does not directly observe individuals' social welfare weights. We derive structural insights about the form of the optimal mechanism, leading to a framework for determining how and when to use nonmarket mechanisms.