I study the ex-ante efficient allocation of a set of quality-heterogeneous objects to a number of heterogeneous risk-neutral agents. Agents have independent private values, which represent the maximum cost they are willing to sustain to obtain an object of unitary quality. The designer faces a...

A number of identical objects is allocated to a set of privately informed agents. Agents have linear utility in money. The designer wants to assign objects to agents that possess specific traits, but the allocation can only be conditioned on the willingness to pay and on observable...

We develop a tool akin to the revelation principle for mechanism design with limited commitment. We identify a canonical class of mechanisms rich enough to replicate the outcomes of any equilibrium in a mechanism-selection game between an uninformed designer and a privately informed agent. A...