Edwards and Ogilvie (2008) dispute the empirical basis for the view (Greif, e.g., 1989, 1994,2006) that multilateral reputation mechanism mitigated agency problems among the eleventh-century Maghribi traders. They assert that the relations among merchants and agents were law-based. This paper...

[This item is a preserved copy. To view the original, visit http://econtheory.org/] We consider Bayesian incentive-compatible mechanisms with independent types and either private values or interdependent values that satisfy a form of "congruence." We show that in these settings, interim...

[This item is a preserved copy. To view the original, visit http://econtheory.org/] The paper considers the communication complexity (measured in bits or real numbers) of Nash implementation of social choice rules. A key distinction is whether we restrict to the traditional one-stage mechanisms...