An absorbing game is a repeated game where some of the action combinations are absorbing, in the sense that whenever they are played, there is a positive probability that the game terminates, and the players receive some terminal payoff at every future stage. We prove that every n-player...

Many auctions involve the sale of a variety of distinct assets. Examples are airport time slots, delivery routes and furniture. Because of complimentarities (or substitution effects) between the different assets, bidders have preferences not just for particular items but for sets or bundles of...

Government procurement and allocation programs often use subsidies and setasides favoring small businesses and other target groups to address fairness concerns. These concerns are in addition to standard objectives such as efficiency and revenue. We study the design of the optimal mechanism for...

We study a seller's optimal mechanism for maximizing revenue when the buyer may present evidence relevant to the buyer's value, or when different types of buyer have a differential ability to communicate. We introduce a dynamic bargaining protocol in which the buyer first makes a sequence of...

This paper highlights connections between the discrete and continuous approaches to optimal auction design with single and multi-dimensional types. We provide an interpretaion of an optimal auction design problem in terms of a linear program that is an instance of a parametric shortest path...

This paper provides a characterization of dominant strategy mechanisms with quasi-linear utilities and multi-dimensional types for a variety of preference domains. These characterizations are in terms of a monotonicity property on the underlying allocation rule.