[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nwu/cmsems/999.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Procurement Mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Alejandro M. Manelli
  • Daniel R. Vincent
Abstract
The procurement of supplies is often conducted through the buyer analogue of an auction. Sealed bids are submitted and the contract is awarded to the lowest bidder. Although this method may be an optimal way of selling an object, an additional complication arises in the case of purchasing a good. When sellers are privately informed about the quality of the good to be sold, these mechanisms typically result in the provision of the lowest quality object. This paper characterizes optimal mechanisms in environments where sellers are privately informed about quality. It shows that the commonly used auction mechanism is privately or socially optimal in only a small class of environments. In another plausible set of environments the optimal mechanism is simply to order potential supplies and to tender take-it-or-leave-it offers to each sequentially. We use the duality theorem of linear programming to provide a methodology by which necessary and sufficient conditions can be derived to determine when any incentive compatible trading environment maximizes social or private surplus.

Suggested Citation

  • Alejandro M. Manelli & Daniel R. Vincent, 1992. "Optimal Procurement Mechanisms," Discussion Papers 999, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:nwu:cmsems:999
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/999.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1992. "Cost Padding, Auditing and Collusion," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 25-26, pages 205-226.
    2. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1990. "Adverse Selection and Renegotiation in Procurement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(4), pages 597-625.
    3. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    4. Kevin Lang & Robert W. Rosenthal, 1991. "The Contractors' Game," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(3), pages 329-338, Autumn.
    5. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    6. Cremer, Jacques & McLean, Richard P, 1988. "Full Extraction of the Surplus in Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1247-1257, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hannu Vartiainen, 2003. "Auction Design without Commitment," Working Papers 2003.24, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    2. Fang,H. & Norman,P., 2003. "An efficiency rationale for bundling of public goods," Working papers 19, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    3. Satterthwaite, Mark A. & Williams, Steven R. & Zachariadis, Konstantinos E., 2014. "Optimality versus practicality in market design: A comparison of two double auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 248-263.
    4. Song, Yangwei, 2018. "Efficient Implementation with Interdependent Valuations and Maxmin Agents," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 92, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    5. Philippe Jehiel & Laurent Lamy, 2018. "A Mechanism Design Approach to the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 735-760.
    6. Jean Tirole, 2016. "From Bottom of the Barrel to Cream of the Crop: Sequential Screening With Positive Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84(4), pages 1291-1343, July.
    7. Song, Yangwei, 2022. "Approximate Bayesian Implementation and Exact Maxmin Implementation: An Equivalence," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 362, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    8. Matthias Lang, 2020. "Mechanism Design with Narratives," CESifo Working Paper Series 8502, CESifo.
    9. Giacomo Calzolari & Alessandro Pavan, 2006. "Monopoly with resale," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 362-375, June.
    10. Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2005. "Allocative and Informational Externalities in Auctions and Related Mechanisms," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000490, UCLA Department of Economics.
    11. Schottmüller, Christoph, 2023. "Optimal information structures in bilateral trade," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 18(1), January.
    12. Steven R. Williams, 1994. "A Characterization of Efficient," Discussion Papers 1100, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    13. Jacob K. Goeree & Alexey Kushnir, 2011. "On the equivalence of Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation in a general class of social choice problems," ECON - Working Papers 021, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    14. Keith Waehrer, 2003. "Hazardous Facility Siting When Cost Information Is Private: An Application of Multidimensional Mechanism Design," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 5(4), pages 605-622, October.
    15. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Peter Cramton, 1998. "The Optimality of Being Efficient," Papers of Peter Cramton 98wpoe, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 18 Jun 1999.
    16. Loertscher, Simon & Marx, Leslie M., 2020. "Asymptotically optimal prior-free clock auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    17. Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2007. "A general characterization of interim efficient mechanisms for independent linear environments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 441-466, March.
    18. Song, Yangwei, 2023. "Approximate Bayesian implementation and exact maxmin implementation: An equivalence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 56-87.
    19. Li, Yunan & Zhang, Xingtan, 2024. "Collective decision through an informed mediator," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    20. Song, Yangwei, 2018. "Efficient implementation with interdependent valuations and maxmin agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 693-726.

    More about this item

    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:nwu:cmsems:999. 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: Fran Walker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmnwuus.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.