Practical or legal constraints often restrict auctions to being symmetric (anonymous and nondiscriminatory). We examine when this restriction prevents a seller from achieving his objectives. In an independent private value setting with heterogenous buyers, we characterize the set of incentive...

We study mechanism design in a setting where agents know their types but are uncertain about the utility from any alternative. The final realized utility of each agent is observed by the principal and can be contracted upon. In such environments, the principal is not restricted to using only...

We study mechanism design in a setting where agents know their types but are uncertain about the utility from any alternative. The final realized utility of each agent is observed by the principal and can be contracted upon. In such environments, the principal is not restricted to using only...

This paper explores the value of memory in decision making in dynamic environments. We examine the decision problem faced by an agent with bounded memory who receives a sequence of signals from a partially observable Markov decision process. We characterize environments in which the optimal...

We develop a model of a dynamic market with randomly arriving participants. Both buyers and sellers arrive probabilistically over time. The valuation of each buyer for each object is independently distributed and private information to each buyer. Equilibrium prices are determined by a sequence...

We examine an environment where goods and privately informed buyers arrive stochastically to a market. A seller in this setting faces a sequential allocation problem with a changing population. We characterize the set of incentive compatible allocation rules and provide a generalized revenue...

We examine a model in which multiple buyers with single-unit demand are faced with an infinite sequence of auctions. New buyers arrive on the market probabilistically, and are each endowed with a constant private value. Moreover, objects also arrive on the market at random times, so the number...

This paper explores the role of memory in decision making in dynamic environments. We examine the inference problem faced by an agent with bounded memory who receives a sequence of signals from a hidden Markov model. We show that the optimal symmetric memory rule may be deterministic. This...

A seller has an uncertain number of perishable goods to sell in each period. Privately informed buyers arrive stochastically to the market. Buyers are risk neutral, patient, and have persistent private values for consuming a single unit. We show that the seller can implement the efficient...

We analyze a dynamic market in which buyers compete in a sequence of private-value auctions for differentiated goods. New buyers and new objects may arrive at random times. Since objects are imperfect substitutes, buyers' values are not persistent. Instead, each buyer's private value for a new...