Implementation with Evidence
Journal article: We generalize the canonical problem of Nash implementation by allowing agents to voluntarily provide discriminatory signals, i.e., evidence. Evidence can either take the form of hard information or, more generally, have differential but nonprohibitive costs in different states. In such environments, social choice functions that are not Maskin-monotonic can be implemented. We formulate a more general property, evidence monotonicity, and show that this is a necessary condition for implementation. Evidence monotonicity is also sufficient for implementation in economic environments. In some settings, such as when agents have small preferences for honesty, any social choice function is evidence-monotonic. Additional characterizations are obtained for hard evidence. We discuss the relationship between the implementation problem where evidence provision is voluntary and a hypothetical problem where evidence can be chosen by the planner as part of an extended outcome space.
Author(s)
Navin Kartik, Olivier Tercieux
Journal
- Theoretical Economics
Date of publication
- 2012
Keywords JEL
Keywords
- Mechanism design
- Costly signaling
- Verifiable information
- Nash implementation
Pages
- 323-355
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 72