Convexity and multi-dimensional screening for spaces with different dimensions

Brendan Pass

Journal of Economic Theory, 2012, vol. 147, issue 6, 2399-2418

Abstract: We study the principal–agent problem. We show that b-convexity of the space of products, a condition which appears in a recent paper by Figalli, Kim and McCann (2011) [9], is necessary to formulate the problem as a maximization over a convex set. We then show that when the dimension m of the space of types is larger than the dimension n of the space of products, this condition implies that the extra dimensions do not encode independent economic information. When m is smaller than n, we show that under b-convexity of the space of types, it is always optimal for the principal to offer goods only from a certain prescribed subset. We show that this is equivalent to offering an m-dimensional space of goods.

Keywords: Principal–agent problem; Multi-dimensional screening; Monopoly; Asymmetric information; Convexity; Unequal dimensions; Optimal transportation; Exclusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D42 D82 H21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053112000580
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:147:y:2012:i:6:p:2399-2418

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2012.05.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Theory is currently edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell

More articles in Journal of Economic Theory from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().