This paper studies the possibility of implementing Pareto optimal outcomes in the combinatorial auction setting where bidders may have budget constraints. I show that when the setting involves a single good, or multiple goods but with single-minded bidders, there is a unique mechanism, called...

We analyze the space of deterministic, dominant-strategy incentive compatible, individually rational and Pareto optimal combinatorial auctions. We examine a model with multidimensional types, nonidentical items, private values and quasilinear preferences for the players with one relaxation; the...

In the presence of (at least locally) increasing returns to scale tech- nologies, the paper asks the question: does there exist an economic system which implements Pareto efficient allocations and respects the voluntary participation principle? To answer this question, the paper formulates an...

This paper explores the sale of an object to an ambiguity averse buyer. We show that the seller can increase his profit by using an ambiguous mechanism. That is, the seller can benefit from hiding certain features of the mechanism that he has committed to from the agent. We then characterize the...

We study optimal selling strategies of a seller who is poorly informed about the buyer’s value for the object. When the maxmin seller only knows that the mean of the distribution of the buyer's valuations belongs to some interval then nature can keep him to payoff zero no matter how much...

This paper studies a model of mechanism design with transfers where agents' preferences need not be quasilinear. In such a model, (1) we characterize dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanisms using a monotonicity property; (2) we establish a revenue uniqueness result: for every dominant...

This paper studies a model of mechanism design with transfers where agents' preferences need not be quasilinear. In such a model, (1) we characterize dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanisms using a monotonicity property; (2) we establish a revenue uniqueness result: for every dominant...