8 papers
Information for nothing and authority for free
Deniz Kattwinkel, Alexander Winter
A principal must decide whether to implement a project. She privately knows the cost, an agent privately knows the benefit. Monetary transfers are not available, and compared to th…
Robust Robustness
Ian Ball, Deniz Kattwinkel
We propose a refinement of the maxmin approach to robustness. A mechanism's payoff guarantee over an ambiguity set is robust if the guarantee is approximately satisfied at priors n…
Competitive Sequential Screening
Ian Ball, Deniz Kattwinkel, Jan Knoepfle
We study competition between firms that contract with consumers before the consumers fully learn their product preferences. In a Hotelling duopoly, firms screen consumers by offeri…
Quota Mechanisms: Finite-Sample Optimality and Robustness
Ian Ball, Deniz Kattwinkel
A quota mechanism, such as a mandatory grading curve, links together multiple decisions. We analyze the performance of quota mechanisms when the number of linked decisions is finit…
Optimal Decision Mechanisms for Committees: Acquitting the Guilty
Deniz Kattwinkel, Alexander Winter
A group of privately informed agents chooses between two alternatives. How should the decision rule be designed if agents are known to be biased in favor of one of the options? We…
The Division of Surplus and the Burden of Proof
Deniz Kattwinkel, Justus Preusser
A principal and an agent divide a surplus. Only the agent knows the surplus' true size and decides how much of it to reveal initially. Both parties can exert costly effort to concl…