Each agent in a market needs to supplement his skill with a particular skill of another agent to complete his project. A platform matches the agents and allows members of the same match to share their skills. A match is valuable to an agent if he is matched with any agent who possesses a skill...

A common assumption in the analysis of symmetric auctions is that the bidders' value estimates exhibit positive informational externalities (PIE). This assumption implies upward drifting price sequences at sequential auctions, which is challenged by an empirical regularity, known as the...

We consider how one party can induce another party to join an international emission compact given private information. Due to multilateral externalities the principal uses her own emissions besides subsidies to incentivize the agent. This leads to a number of non-standard features: Optimal...

This study explores mechanism design for networks of interpersonal relationships. Agents' social (i.e., altruistic or spiteful) preferences and private payoffs are all subject to asymmetric information; utility is (quasi-)linear, types are independent. I show that any network of at least three...

This paper analyzes incentives for polluting firms to exchange abatement cost information under the non-linear pollution tax scheme ( differential tax') introduced by Kim and Chang [J. Regul. Econom. 5, 1993, 193-197]. It shows that polluting firms have - under mild conditions - an incentive to...

We analyze Pareto-efficient tax breaks for work-related expenses in a Mirrleesian environment. Individuals are heterogenous in their ability. In addition to a labor-leisure choice, they decide how to spend their money between normal consumption and work-related goods. We derive an efficiency...

Countries often have private information about their willingness to pay for protecting the climate system and their cost of emission reductions. We use a principal-agent model to re-examine the economic case for unilateral action by individual countries, in our case of the principal. We find...

Individuals derive benefits from their connections, but these may, at the same time, transmit external threats. Individuals therefore invest in security to protect themselves. However, the incentives to invest in security depend on their network exposures. We study the problem of designing a...

Imperfect information is widely acknowledged to hamper the adoption of energy efficient technologies. In this paper, we study supply-side implications of the associated incentive structure. We build on existing evidence suggesting that energy efficiency owns a credence component, whereby the...

How agents assess the (in-)tangible externalities that others might impose on them can strongly influence strategic interaction. This study explores mechanism design for agents whose externality assessments and private payoffs, exclusive of externalities, are all subject to asymmetric...