The authors consider a single consumer buying a stream of goods from different sellers over time. The true value of each seller's product is initially unknown. Additional information is obtained by experimentation. For exogenous prices, this is a multiarmed bandit problem. The innovation here is...

We consider a general mechanism design setting where each agent can acquire (covert) information before participating in the mechanism. The central question is whether a mechanism exists that provides the efficient incentives for information acquisition ex-ante and implements the efficient...