Keeping the Agents in the Dark: Competing Mechanisms, Private Disclosures, and the Revelation Principle

Andrea Attar (), Eloisa Campioni (), Thomas Mariotti () and Alessandro Pavan ()
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Andrea Attar: CEIS & DEF University of Rome "Tor Vergata", http://www.ceistorvergata.it
Eloisa Campioni: CEIS & DEF University of Rome "Tor Vergata", http://www.ceistorvergata.it
Thomas Mariotti: Toulouse School of Economics, CNRS
Alessandro Pavan: Northwestern University

No 615, CEIS Research Paper from Tor Vergata University, CEIS

Abstract: We study the design of market information in competing-mechanism games. We identify a new dimension, private disclosures, whereby the principals asymmetrically inform the agents of how their mechanisms operate. We show that private disclosures have two important effects. First, they can raise a principal's payoff guarantee against her competitors' threats. Second, they can support equilibrium outcomes and payoffs that cannot be supported with standard mechanisms. These results call for a novel approach to competing mechanisms, which we develop to identify a canonical game and a canonical class of equilibria, thereby establishing a new revelation principle for this class of environments.

Keywords: Incomplete Information; Competing Mechanisms; Private Disclosures; Revelation Principle. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 84 pages
Date: 2025-10-28, Revised 2025-10-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des, nep-gth and nep-mic
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