Robust contracting under common value uncertainty

dc.contributor.authorAUSTER, Sarah
dc.date.accessioned2018-12-06T13:55:16Z
dc.date.available2018-12-06T13:55:16Z
dc.date.issued2018
dc.descriptionFirst published: 01 February 2018en
dc.descriptionThis is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License 4.0 (http://econtheory.org)
dc.description.abstractA 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. This 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 epsilon-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.
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.citationTheoretical economics, 2018, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 175-204
dc.identifier.doi10.3982/TE2385
dc.identifier.endpage204
dc.identifier.issn1555-7561
dc.identifier.issue1
dc.identifier.startpage175
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/59926
dc.identifier.volume13
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherEconometric Societyen
dc.relation.ispartofTheoretical economics
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.subjectAmbiguity
dc.subjectOptimal contracting
dc.subjectLemons problem
dc.subjectMechanism designen
dc.titleRobust contracting under common value uncertainty
dc.typeArticleen
dspace.entity.typePublication
eui.subscribe.skiptrue
person.identifier.other33426
relation.isAuthorOfPublication3f18d4f5-ef93-4ded-9752-239252c42047
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery3f18d4f5-ef93-4ded-9752-239252c42047
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