We show existence of equilibria in istributional strategies for a wide class of private value auctions, including the first general existence result for double auctions. The set of quilibria is invariant to the tie-breaking rule. The model incorporates multiple unit demands, all standard pricing...

We study procurement auctions in which, as is common in practice, a group of sellers (incumbents, qualified bidders) is given an advantage, based, for example, on better reliability, quality, or incumbency status. We show conditions under which for any given first price handicap auction, there...

We provide a new class of counter-examples to existence in a simple moral hazard problem in which the first-order approach is valid. In contrast to the Mirrlees example, unbounded likelihood ratios on the signal technology are not central. Rather, our examples center around the behavior of the...

We provide general conditions under which principal-agent problems admit mechanisms that are optimal for the principal. Our result covers as special cases those in which the agent has no private information –i.e., pure moral hazard –as well as those in which the agent’s only action...

We consider discontinuous games with incomplete information. Auctions are a leading example. With standard tie breaking rules (or more generally, sharing rules), these games may not have equilibria. We consider sharing rules that depend on the private information of players. We show that there...