Information Design and Mechanism Design: An Integrated Framework

Dirk Bergemann, Tibor Heumann and Stephen Morris

No 21088, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We develop an integrated framework for information design and mechanism design in screening environments with quasilinear utility. Using the tools of majorization theory and quantile functions, we show that both information design and mechanism design problems reduce to maximizing linear functionals subject to majorization constraints. For mechanism design, the designer chooses allocations weakly majorized by the exogenous inventory. For information design, the designer chooses information structures that are majorized by the prior distribution. When the designer can choose both the mechanism and the information structure simultaneously, then the joint optimization problem becomes bilinear with two majorization constraints. We show that pooling of values and associated allocations is always optimal in this case. Our approach unifies classic results in auction theory and screening, extends them to information design settings, and provides new insights into the welfare effects of jointly optimizing allocation and information.

Keywords: Screening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D44 D47 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21088 (application/pdf)

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:cpr:ceprdp:21088

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21088

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().