2001): \Robust Mechanism Design (2009)
Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris, Dirk Bergemann, Stephen Morris, Eep Baliga, Matt Jackson, ...
The mechanism design literature assumes too much common knowledge of the environment among the players and planner. We relax this assumption by studying implementation on richer type spaces. We ask...
The Nobel Prize in Economics 2007: Background on Contributions to the Theory of (2009)
Mechanism Design, Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, Roger Myerson
The theories of mechanism design and implementation provide a strategic analysis of the operation of various institutions for social decision making, with applications ranging from modeling election...
Alvin E. Roth, Axel Ockenfels, Seungjin Han, Ehud Kalai, Eric Maskin, Muriel Niederle, ...
Stanford, and Wellesly. We also thank two anonymous referees for very helpful comments, the many bidders who allowed us to interview them, and the readers of a New York Times column by Hal Varian and...
Optimal Pricing Mechanisms with Unknown Demand By ILYA SEGAL* (2008)
Guido Imbens, Eric Maskin, Steven Tadelis, Hal Varian, Michael Whinston
The standard profit-maximizing multiunit auction intersects the submitted demand curve with a preset reservation supply curve, which is determined using the distribution from which the buyers ’...
Jian Li, Tatiana Lau, Eric Maskin, Jonathan D. Cohen, P. Read Montague, ...
Auctions, normally considered as devices facilitating trade, also provide a way to probe mechanisms governing one's valuation of some good or action. One of the most intriguing phenomena in auction...
The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government (2004)
We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i.e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountablity allows the public to...
Collusion and price rigidity (2004)
Susan Athey, Kyle Bagwell, Chris Sanchirico, Doug Bernheim, Dennis Carlton, Glenn Ellison, ...
We consider an in¯nitely repeated Bertrand game, in which prices are publicly observed and each ¯rm receives a privately observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period. We focus on symmetric perfect...
The Communication Requirements of Social Choice Rules and Supporting Budget Sets (2004)
Ilya Segal, Jonathan Levin, Eric Maskin, Paul Milgrom, Andy Postlewaite
The paper examines the communication requirements of social choice rules when the (sincere) agents privately know their preferences. It shows that for a large class of choice rules, any communication...
The Communication Requirements of Social Choice Rules and Supporting Budget Sets (2003)
Ilya Segal, Jonathan Levin, Eric Maskin, Paul Milgrom, Andy Postlewaite
The paper examines the communication requirements of social choice rules when the (sincere) agents privately know their preferences. It shows that for a large class of choice rules, any communication...
Soft budget constraint theories: from centralization to the market (2001)
budget constraints (SBC) on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of SBC in general. It focuses on the conception of the SBC syndrome as a...
Soft budget constraint theories: from centralization to the market (2001)
budget constraints (SBC) on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of SBC in general. It focuses on the conception of the SBC syndrome as a...
Efficient design with interdependent valuations (2001)
Benny Moldovanu, Eric Maskin, Paul Milgrom, Tim Van Z
We study efficient, Bayes-Nash incentive compatible mechanisms in a social choice setting that allows for informational and allocative externalities. We show that such mechanisms exist only if a...
The problem of social decision making when information is decentralized has occupied economists since the days of Adam Smith. An influential article by Hayek crystallized the problem. Since "the...
Issue 2 EFFICIENT AUCTIONS* (2000)
We exhibit an efficient auction (an auction that maximizes surplus conditional on all available information). For private values, the Vickrey auction (for one good) or its Groves-Clarke extension...
Sequential innovation, patents and imitation (2000)
James Bessen, James Bessen, James Bessen, Eric Maskin, Eric Maskin, Eric Maskin
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article for noncommerical use are permitted in any medium provided this notice is preserved. Working Paper 11/99 Abstract: How could such industries...
Strategic Candidacy and Voting Procedures (2000)
Bhaskar Dutta, Matthew O. Jackson, Michel Le Breton, Hulya Eraslan, Tim Feddersen, John Ledyard, ...
We study the incentives of candidates to strategically affect the outcome of a voting procedure. We show that the outcomes of every non-dictatorial voting procedure that satisfies unanimity will be...
Sequential innovation, patents and imitation (2000)
Harrington, and participants at many seminars and conferences for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge research support from the NSF. We argue that when discoveries are “sequential ” (so...
Nash equilibrium and welfare optimality (1999)
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please...
Electoral Competition Under The Threat Of Political Unrest (1999)
Matthew Ellman, Leonard Wantchekon, Elena Krasnokutskaya, Eric Maskin, Steve Morris, Roger Myerson, ...
We study elections in which one party (the strong party) controls a source of political unrest; e.g., this party could instigate riots if it lost the election. We show that the strong party is more...
1 ⊺ Acknowledgement: We are grateful to Professors Kenneth Arrow, Walter Bossert, (1999)
Reiko Gotoh, Kotaro Suzumura, Naoki Yoshihara, Rajat Deb, Marc Fleurbaey, Frederic Gaspart, ...
Abstract: Following the viewpoint of pure procedural justice, we analyze a social decision procedure for choosing fair allocation rules in production economies, which is formulated as an extended...
Implementation and renegotiation (1998)
The paper characterises the choice rules that can be implemented when agents are unable to commit themselves not to renegotiate the mechanism.
Implementation and renegotiation (1998)
The paper characterises the choice rules that can be implemented when agents are unable to commit themselves not to renegotiate the mechanism.
Maskin, Eric, Qian, Yingyi, Xu, Cheng-Gang
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modeled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
Maskin, Eric, Qian, Yingyi, Xu, Cheng-Gang
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modeled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
Incentives, scale economies, and organizational form (1997)
Maskin, Eric, Qian, Yingyi, Xu, Cheng-Gang
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modelled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
Incentives, scale economies, and organizational form (1997)
Maskin, Eric, Qian, Yingyi, Xu, Cheng-Gang
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modelled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
Incentives, Scale Economies, and Organizational Form (1997)
Maskin, Eric, Quan, Yingyi, Xu, Chenggang
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modeled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
An efficient ascending-bid auction for multiple objects (1997)
Ronald Harstad, John Ledyard, Eric Maskin, Paul Milgrom, Vernon Smith, Lawrence M. Ausubel, ...
I am extraordinarily grateful to Kathleen Jacobson and Peter Cramton for numerous helpful discussions. I also
Intellectual Property on the Internet: What's Wrong with Conventional Wisdom? (1997)
Jim Bessen And, Jim Bessen, Eric Maskin
This paper argues that the Internet and World Wide Web possess characteristics that may make such policy inappropriatethe Web is a "community" that is highly interactive and dynamic. This...
BalancedBudget Mechanisms with Incomplete Information,” mimeo (1995)
Drew Fudenberg, David K. Levine, Eric Maskin
Abstract: We examine mechanism design with transferable utility and budget balance, using techniques we developed for the study of repeated games. We show that with independent types, budget balance...
Matthew B. Ellman, Oliver Hart, Eric Maskin, Andrei Shleifer, Matthew B. Ellman
Design, ” BEC2000-1026, Xavier Calsamiglia (Project head)
An Equilibrium Analysis of Search and Breach of Contract, I: Steady States
We study the steady-state equilibrium of models where individuals meet pairwise in a costly stochastic search process and negotiate contracts to product output. Different meetings yield different...
Incentives, Scale Economies, and Organizational Form
Eric Maskin, Yingyi Quan, Chenggang Xu
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modeled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government
We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i. e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountability allows the public to...
Unemployment with Observable Aggregate Shocks
Sanford J. Grossman, Oliver D. Hart, Eric Maskin
Consider an economy subject to two kinds of shocks: (a) an observable shock to the relative demand for final goods which causes dispersion in relative prices, and (b) shocks, unobservable by workers,...
Soft Budget Constraint Theories: From Centralization to the Market
This Paper surveys the theoretical literature on the effect of soft budget constraints (SBC) on economies in transition from centralization to capitalism; it also reviews our understanding of SBC in...
On the Robustness of Majority Rule
We show that simple majority rule satisfies five standard and attractive axioms— the Pareto property, anonymity, neutrality, independence of irrelevant alternatives and (generic) decisiveness—on...
The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government
We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i.e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountablity allows the public to...
Implementation, Social Decision Making, Nash Equilibrium, Bayesian Implementation
The Folk Theorem with Imperfect Public Information.
Fudenberg, Drew, Levine, David I, Maskin, Eric
The authors study repeated games in which players observe a public outcome that imperfectly signals the actions played. They provide conditions guaranteeing that any feasible, individually rational...
Eric Maskin, Yingyi Qian, Chenggang Xu
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modelled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
The paper characterises the choice rules that can be implemented when agents are unable to commit themselves not to renegotiate the mechanism.
The Simple Economics of Research Portfolios.
Dasgupta, Partha, Maskin, Eric
This article identifies biases in market portfolios of parallel research projects arising from the noncongruence of social goals and private aspirations, occasioned by those circumstances where the...
Understanding the Soft Budget Constraint
Janos Kornai, Eric Maskin, Gerard Roland
We propose a clarification of the notion of a soft budget constraint, a concept widely used in the analysis of socialist, transitional, and market economies. Our interpretation is broad enough to...
Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation
We argue that when discoveries are "sequential" (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in...
Uniqueness of Equilibrium in Sealed High-Bid Auctions
Sealed High-Bid Auctions, Equilibrium
Uncertainty and Hyperbolic Discounting
We propose an evolutionary explanation for the pattern of intertemporal preference reversals often ascribed to "hyperbolic discounting." We take the view that preferences—manifested, for example,...
Mechanism design for the environment
Baliga, Sandeep, Maskin, Eric, K. G. Mäler, J. R. Vincent
We argue that when externalities such as pollution are nonexcludable, agents must be compelled to participate in a "mechanism" to ensure a Pareto-efficient outcome. We survey some of the main...
Incentives, Information, and Organizational Form.
Maskin, Eric, Qian, Yingyi, Xu, Chenggang
We model an organization as a hierarchy of managers erected on top of a technology (here consisting of a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to take steps to reduce the...
Equilibrium in Sealed High Bid Auctions.
There is a voluminous theoretical literature on sealed high-bid auctions (auctions in which bids are sealed and the high bidder pays his bid). See for example, Vickrey (1961), Myerson (1981), Riley...
The revenue-equivalence theorm for auctions predicts that expected seller revenue is independent of the bidding rules, as long as equilibrium has the properties that the buyer with the highest...
Two Remarks on the Property-Rights Literature.
The authors first point out that the recent property-rights literature is based on three assumptions: (1) that contracts are always subject to renegotiation; (2) that the exercise of a property right...
Unforeseen Contingencies and Incomplete Contracts.
The authors scrutinize the conceptual framework commonly used in the incomplete contract literature. This literature usually assumes that contractual incompleteness is due to the transaction costs of...
Implementation and Renegotiation.
This paper characterizes the choice rules that can be implemented when agents are unable to commit themselves not to renegotiate the mechanism. Copyright 1999 by The Review of Economic Studies...
Nash Equilibrium and Welfare Optimality.
If is a set of social alternatives, a social choice rule (SCR) assigns a subset of A to each potential profile of individuals' preferences over A, where the subset is interpreted as the set of...
Maskin, Eric, Sjostrom, Tomas, K. J. Arrow, A. K. Sen, K. Suzumura
The implementation problem is the problem of designing a mechanism (game form) such that the equilibrium outcomes satisfy a criterion of social optimality embodied in a social choice rule. If a...
The Principal-Agent Relationship with an Informed Principal, II: Common Values.
A principal has private information that directly affects her agent's payoff (i.e., "common values" obtains). The authors analyze their relationship as a three-stage game: (1) the principal proposes...
The Principal-Agent Relationship with an Informed Principal: The Case of Private Values.
The authors analyze the principal-agent relationship when the principal has private information as a three-stage game: contract proposal, acceptance/refusal, and contract execution. They assume that...
A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly, II: Price Competition, Kinked Demand Curves, and Edgeworth Cycles.
The authors provide game theoretic foundations for the classic kinke d demand curve and Edgeworth cycle. In their alternating-move model, there are multiple Markov perfect equilibria of both the...
A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly, I: Overview and Quantity Competition with Large Fixed Costs.
The authors introduce a class of alternating-move, infinite-horizon models of duopoly. The timing captures the presence of short-run commitment s. They apply this framework to a natural monopoly in...
Understanding the Soft Budget Constraint
Janos Kornai, Eric Maskin, Gerard Roland
We propose a clarification of the notion of a soft budget constraint, a concept widely used in the analysis of socialist, transitional, and market economies. Our interpretation is broad enough to...
Monopoly with Incomplete Information
Recent theoretical research on principal-agent relationships has emphasized incentive problems that arise when the parties involved are constrained by either asymmetric information or their inability...
We exhibit an efficient auction (an auction that maximizes surplus conditional on all available information). For private values, the Vickrey auction (for one good) or its Groves-Clarke extension...
On the fundamental theorems of general equilibrium
Equilibrium, Pareto optimum, Walras Law, B21, C62, D51, D61,
Public-private partnerships and government spending limits
We consider public-private partnerships, in which a public official selects a project that is then developed and operated by a private contractor. We derive optimal public accounting rules when the...
On The Robustness of Majority Rule
We show that simple majority rule satisfies five standard and attractive axioms-the Pareto property, anonymity, neutrality, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and (generic) decisiveness-over a...
Wage Inequality and Segregation by Skill
Evidence from the US, Britain, and France suggests that recent growth in wage inequality has been accompanied by greater segregation of high- and low-skill workers into separate firms. A model in...
Incentives, Information, and Organizational Form
Eric Maskin, Yingyi Qian, Chenggang Xu
December 1997 This paper has been revised as Stanford Economics Working Paper 99-009.
Incentives, Information, and Organizational Form
Eric Maskin, Yingyi Qian, Chenggang Xu
February 6, 1999 We model an organization as a hierarchy of managers erected on top of a technology (here consisting of a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to take...
The value of victory: social origins of the winner's curse in common value auctions
Jian Li, Tatiana Lau, Eric Maskin, Jonathan D. Cohen, P. Read Montague, ...
Auctions, normally considered as devices facilitating trade, also provide a way to probe mechanisms governing one's valuation of some good or action. One of the most intriguing phenomena in auction...
Economic Analysis of Markets and Games: Essays in Honor of Frank Hahn
Partha Dasgupta, Douglas Gale, Oliver Hart, Eric Maskin
These original essays focus on a wide range of topics related to Frank Hahn's distinguished work in economics. Ranging from market analysis and game theory to the microeconomic foundations of...
An Equilibrium Analysis of Search and Breach of Contract
The literature on markets where agents have imperfect information about their trading possibilities has been growing considerably. Many models of this literature depend fundamentally on asymmetries :...
Rational Expectations with Market Power - The Paradox of the Disadvantageous Tariff on Oil
The theoretical analysis of exaustible resources has to date largely ignored the "geo-political realities" which preoccupy policy makers and has concentrated on the logically prior problem of...
Eric Maskin, Yingyi Qian, Chenggang Xu
We model organization as the command-and-communication network of managers erected on top of technology (which is modeled as a collection of plants). In our framework, the role of a manager is to...
I was born in New York City, but grew up across the Hudson River in Alpine, New Jersey. With fewer than a thousand residents, Alpine was too small to have its own secondary schools, so I attended...
Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation
We argue that when innovation is sequential (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) and complementary (so that each potential innovator takes a different...