[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/2385.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Robust contracting under common value uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Auster, Sarah

    (Department of Decision Sciences and IGIER, Bocconi University)

Abstract
A buyer makes an offer to a privately informed seller for a good of uncertain quality. Quality determines both the seller's valuation and the buyer's valuation and the buyer evaluates each contract according to its worst-case performance over a set of probability distributions. The paper demonstrates that the contract that maximizes the minimum payoff over all possible probability distributions of quality is a screening menu that separates all types, whereas the optimal contract for any given probability distribution is a posted price, which induces bunching. Using the ϵ-contamination model, according to which the buyer's utility is a weighted average of his single prior expected utility and the worst-case scenario, the analysis further shows that for intermediate degrees of confidence the optimal mechanism combines features of both of these contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • Auster, Sarah, 2018. "Robust contracting under common value uncertainty," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:2385
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20180175/19823/586
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Igor Kopylov, 2016. "Subjective probability, confidence, and Bayesian updating," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 62(4), pages 635-658, October.
    2. Subir Bose & Suresh Mutuswami, 2012. "Bilateral Bargaining in an Ambiguous Environment," Discussion Papers in Economics 12/10, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    3. Nenad Kos & Matthias Messner, 2015. "Selling to the mean," Working Papers 551, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    4. Bodoh-Creed, Aaron L., 2012. "Ambiguous beliefs and mechanism design," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 518-537.
    5. Samuelson, William F, 1984. "Bargaining under Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 995-1005, July.
    6. Alexander Frankel, 2014. "Aligned Delegation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 66-83, January.
    7. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    8. Alfredo Di Tillio & Nenad Kos & Matthias Messner, 2012. "The Design of Ambiguous Mechanisms," Working Papers 446, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    9. Dirk Bergemann & Karl Schlag, 2012. "Robust Monopoly Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 13, pages 417-441, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    11. Garrett, Daniel F., 2014. "Robustness of simple menus of contracts in cost-based procurement," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 631-641.
    12. Philipp K. Illeditsch & Jayant V. Ganguli & Scott Condie, 2021. "Information Inertia," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(1), pages 443-479, February.
    13. Ganguli, Jayant & Condie, Scott, 2012. "The pricing effects of ambiguous private information," Economics Discussion Papers 5631, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    14. Carroll, Gabriel & Meng, Delong, 2016. "Locally robust contracts for moral hazard," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 36-51.
    15. Gabriel Carroll, 2015. "Robustness and Linear Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 536-563, February.
    16. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    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. Julio Backhoff-Veraguas & Patrick Beissner & Ulrich Horst, 2019. "Robust Contracting in General Contract Spaces," Papers 1910.12516, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2021.
    2. Zhaolin Li & Samuel N. Kirshner, 2021. "Salesforce Compensation and Two‐Sided Ambiguity: Robust Moral Hazard with Moment Information," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(9), pages 2944-2961, September.
    3. Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler, 2021. "Persuasion with Ambiguous Receiver Preferences," Papers 2109.11536, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    4. Giuseppe Lopomo & Luca Rigotti & Chris Shannon, 2021. "Uncertainty in Mechanism Design," Papers 2108.12633, arXiv.org.
    5. Sosung Baik & Sung-Ha Hwang, 2021. "Auction design with ambiguity: Optimality of the first-price and all-pay auctions," Papers 2110.08563, arXiv.org.
    6. Wanchang Zhang, 2021. "Random Double Auction: A Robust Bilateral Trading Mechanism," Papers 2105.05427, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    7. Eran Hanany & Peter Klibanoff & Sujoy Mukerji, 2020. "Incomplete Information Games with Ambiguity Averse Players," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 135-187, May.
    8. Evren, Özgür, 2019. "Recursive non-expected utility: Connecting ambiguity attitudes to risk preferences and the level of ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 285-307.
    9. Soheil Ghili & Peter Klibanoff, 2021. "If It Is Surely Better, Do It More? Implications for Preferences Under Ambiguity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7619-7636, December.
    10. NAKADA, Satoshi & NITZAN, Shmuel & UI, Takashi & 宇井, 貴志, 2017. "Robust Voting under Uncertainty," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-60, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    11. Rosenthal, Maxwell, 2023. "Robust incentives for risk," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    12. Suzdaltsev, Alex, 2022. "Distributionally robust pricing in independent private value auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    13. Julio Backhoff-Veraguas & Patrick Beissner & Ulrich Horst, 2022. "Robust contracting in general contract spaces," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 73(4), pages 917-945, June.
    14. Longjian Li, 2022. "Ambiguous Cheap Talk," Papers 2209.08494, 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. Evren, Özgür, 2019. "Recursive non-expected utility: Connecting ambiguity attitudes to risk preferences and the level of ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 285-307.
    2. Carrasco, Vinicius & Farinha Luz, Vitor & Kos, Nenad & Messner, Matthias & Monteiro, Paulo & Moreira, Humberto, 2018. "Optimal selling mechanisms under moment conditions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 245-279.
    3. Nenad Kos & Matthias Messner, 2015. "Selling to the mean," Working Papers 551, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    4. Vinicius Carrasco & Vitor Farinha Luz & Paulo K. Monteiro & Humberto Moreira, 2019. "Robust mechanisms: the curvature case," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(1), pages 203-222, July.
    5. Ju Hu & Xi Weng, 2021. "Robust persuasion of a privately informed receiver," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(3), pages 909-953, October.
    6. Carroll, Gabriel, 2016. "Informationally robust trade and limits to contagion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 334-361.
    7. Song, Yangwei, 2018. "Efficient Implementation with Interdependent Valuations and Maxmin Agents," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 92, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    8. Kristóf Madarász & Andrea Prat, 2017. "Sellers with Misspecified Models," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 790-815.
    9. Carroll, Gabriel & Meng, Delong, 2016. "Robust contracting with additive noise," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 586-604.
    10. De Castro, Luciano & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2018. "Uncertainty, efficiency and incentive compatibility: Ambiguity solves the conflict between efficiency and incentive compatibility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 678-707.
    11. Mustafa Ç. Pınar, 2018. "Robust trading mechanisms over 0/1 polytopes," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 845-860, October.
    12. Wolitzky, Alexander, 2016. "Mechanism design with maxmin agents: theory and an application to bilateral trade," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), September.
    13. Julio Backhoff-Veraguas & Patrick Beissner & Ulrich Horst, 2022. "Robust contracting in general contract spaces," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 73(4), pages 917-945, June.
    14. Urmee Khan & Martin Dumav, 2018. "Moral Hazard, Uncertain Technologies, and Linear Contracts," Working Papers 201806, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    15. Song, Yangwei, 2018. "Efficient implementation with interdependent valuations and maxmin agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 693-726.
    16. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Book Review," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 535-542, September.
    17. Martin Szydlowski, 2012. "Ambiguity in Dynamic Contracts," Discussion Papers 1543, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    18. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2006. "Book Review of “Contract Theory” (Bolton and Dewatripont, 2005)," MPRA Paper 6977, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Robert E. Hall, 2014. "Trade with Asymmetric Information," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Sofía Bauducco & Lawrence Christiano & Claudio Raddatz (ed.),Macroeconomic and Financial Stability: challenges for Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 19, chapter 5, pages 151-160, Central Bank of Chile.
    20. Fieseler, Karsten & Kittsteiner, Thomas & Moldovanu, Benny, 2003. "Partnerships, lemons, and efficient trade," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 223-234, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ambiguity aversion; optimal contracting; lemons problem;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law

    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:the:publsh:2385. 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: Martin J. Osborne (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.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.