"This dissertation studies a standard voting formulation with randomization. Formally, there is a finite set of voters, a finite set of alternatives and a lottery space over the alternative set. Each voter has a strict preference over alternatives. The domain of preferences contains all admissible preferences. Every voter reports a preference in the domain; a preference profile is generated; and the social lottery then is determined by a Random Social Choice Function (or RSCF). This dissertation focuses on RSCFs which provide every voter incentives to truthfully reveal her preference, and hence follows the formulation of strategy proofness in [26] which requires that the lottery under truth telling (first-order) stochastically dominates the lottery under any misrepresentation according to every voter’s true preference independently of others’ behaviors. Moreover, this dissertation restricts attention to the class of unanimous RSCFs, that is, if the alternative is the best for all voters in a preference profile, it receives probability one. A typical class of unanimous and strategy-proof RSCFs is random dictatorships. A domain is a random dictatorship domain if every unanimous and strategy proof RSCF is a random dictatorship... "-- Author's abstract.
This dissertation consists of three essays in the theory of mechanism design under incomplete information. In the first essay, we analyze an implementation problem in which monetary transfers are feasible, valuations are interdependent and the set of available choices lies in a product space of lattices. This framework is general enough to subsume many interesting examples, including allocation problems with multiple objects. We identify a class of social choice rules which can be implemented in ex post equilibrium. We identify conditions under which ex post efficient social choice rules are implementable using monotone selection theory. The key conditions are extensions of the single crossing property and supermodularity. These conditions can be replaced with more tractable conditions in multiobject allocation problems with either two objects or two agents. I also show that the payments which implement monotone social decision rules coincide with the payments of (1) the classical Vickrey-Clarke-Groves mechanism with private values, and (2) the generalized Vickrey auction introduced by Ausubel [1999] in multiunit allocation problems. The second essay generalizes the analysis of optimal (revenue maximizing) mechanism design for the seller of a single object introduced by Myerson [1981]. We consider a problem in which the seller has several heterogeneous objects and buyers' valuations depend on each other's private information. We analyze two nonnested environments in which incentive constraints can be replaced with more tractable monotonicity conditions. We establish conditions under which these monotonicity conditions can be ignored, and show that several earlier analyses of the optimal mechanism design problem can be unified and generalized. In particular, problems with two complementary goods in Levin [1997] and multiunit auction problems in Maskin and Riley [1989] and Branco [1996] are special cases. The third essay considers the problem of selling internet advertising slots to advertisers. Under suitable conditions, we solve for the payments imposed by an optimal mechanism and show that it can be decentralized via prices using a linear assignment approach. At every configuration of private information, optimal mechanism can be interpreted as a menu consisting of a price for every slot.
The three essays presented in this thesis, concentrate on different areas of mechanism design that aim to address environmental issues related to permits markets, electricity consumption and water use. Using the advantages of a laboratory setting, this thesis aims to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the appropriate mechanisms solutions for solving severalenvironmental issues related to the design of emission markets, the management of common pool resources and the impact of designing complex tariff mechanisms for acquiring a good. In the first essay, we use experimental emissions trading markets to investigate the effects of two types of instruments for dealing with the negative effects of price risk that results from the potential shocks that could affect production costs. As per the results obtained, the first mechanism that allows banking and borrowing permits from one period to another, yields some important benefits in terms of the reduction of price volatility and leading to overall flatter price series. The second instrument, besides allowing for permit transfer, also considers an adjustable supply of permits, such that besides managing to stabilize the price path, it also creates more significant results in terms of settling it around a desired target price level.In the second essay, we consider the dilemma that consumers are often faced with, when dealing with different tariff choices (mobile phone, electricity, train, airplane, gas etc.). It may be very complex to choose among these tariffs, notably because of the so-called cognitive biases that might distort consumers' perception. Typically, what should consumers choose between a simple tariff pricing and a more complex but also more advantageous non-linear tariff structure? We show that, in the lab, even when the more complex non-linear tariff structures are 50% more advantageous, in terms of gain expectancy, consumers constantly stick to the tariff with the most simple structure. Subjects are reluctant to choose pricing instruments containing a fixed cost and increasing block pricing structures.In the third essay, we examine cooperation in the context of a non-linear common pool resource game, in which individuals have unequal extraction capacities. We introduce two types of policy instruments in this environment. One instrument is based on two variants of a mechanism that taxes extraction and redistributes the tax revenue to group members. The other instrument varies the social observability of individual decisions. We find that both tax mechanisms reduce extraction, increase efficiency and reduce inequality within groups. In contrast, observability impacts only the Baseline condition by facilitating free-riding instead of creating a moral pressure on group members.
This dissertation contains three essays on mechanism design. The common goal of these essays is to assist in the solution of different resource allocation problems where asymmetric information creates obstacles to the efficient allocation of resources. In each essay, we present a mechanism that satisfactorily solves the resource allocation problem and study some of its properties. In our first essay, "Combinatorial Assignment under Dichotomous Preferences", we present a class of problems akin to time scheduling without a pre-existing time grid, and propose a mechanism that is efficient, strategy-proof and envy-free. Our second essay, "Monitoring Costs and the Management of Common-Pool Resources", studies what can happen to an existing mechanism - the individual tradable quotas (ITQ) mechanism, also known as the cap-and-trade mechanism - when quota enforcement is imperfect and costly. Our third essay, "Vessel Buyback", coauthored with John O. Ledyard, presents an auction design that can be used to buy back excess capital in overcapitalized industries.
