We study games in which multiple principals influence the choice of a privately-informed agent by offering action-contingent payments. We characterize the equilibrium allocation set as the maximizers of an endogenous aggregate virtual-surplus program. The aggregate maximand for every equilibrium...

We study games in which multiple principals influence the choice of a privately-informed agent by offering action-contingent payments. We characterize the equilibrium allocation set as the maximizers of an endogenous aggregate virtual-surplus program. The aggregate maximand for every equilibrium...

We characterize the complete set of equilibrium allocations to a two-type intrinsic common agency screening game as the set of solutions to a self-generating optimization program. The program, in turn, can be thought of as a maximization problem facing a fictional “surrogate” principal with...

We use a mechanism design approach to study the organization of interest groups in an informational model of lobbying. Interest groups influence the legislature only by communicating private information on their preferences and not by means of monetary transfers. Interest groups have private...

Polarized interest groups (principals) compete to influence a decision-maker (agent) through monetary contributions. This decision-maker chooses a one-dimensional policy and has private information about his ideal point. Competition between interest groups under asymmetric information yields a...

We characterize the complete set of equilibrium allocations to an intrinsic common agency screening game as the set of solutions to self-generating optimization programs. We provide a complete characterization of equilibrium outcomes for regular environments by relying on techniques developed...

This paper uses a mechanism design approach to characterize the optimal organization of lobbying groups in a political context where those groups have private information on their ideal points in a one-dimensional policy space. First, we derive the optimal mechanism for one single group and show...

Polarized interest groups (principals) compete to influence a decision-maker (agent) through monetary contributions. This decision-maker chooses a one-dimensional policy and has private information about his ideal point. Competition between interest groups under asymmetric information yields a...

An aggregate game is a normal-form game with the property that each player’s payoff is a function only of his own strategy and an aggregate function of the strategy profile of all players. Aggregate games possess a set of purely algebraic properties that can often provide simple...

This note uses techniques developed for aggregate games to characterize the set of equilib- ria for a beauty contest or prediction game in which the experts’ preferences are quadratic, but with an otherwise unrestricted information structure for private signals and the state variable. We show...