We consider repeated games with private monitoring that are 'close' to repeated games with public/perfect monitoring. A private monitoring information structure is close to a public monitoring information structure when private signals can generate approximately the same distribution of the...

Consider a mechanism design setting in which agents acquire costly information about an unknown, payoff-relevant state of nature. Information gathering is covert. We investigate conditions under which (i) efficient implementation and (ii) full surplus extraction are Bayesian incentive compatible...