This note considers a bargaining environment with two-sided asymmetric information and quasilinear preferences in which parties select bargaining mechanism after learning their valuations. I demonstrate that sometimes the buyer achieves a higher ex-ante payoff if the bargaining mechanism is...

We show that a solution to the problem of mechanism selection by an informed principal exists in a large class of environments with “generalized private values”: the agents’ payoff functions are independent of the principal’s type. The solution is an extension of Maskin and Tirole’s...

How should a group of people decide to allocate a task that has to be done but is not adequately rewarded? This paper finds an optimal mechanism for the private provision of a public service in an environment without monetary transfers. All members of the group have the same cost of providing...