Information Design
- Information Design in Optimal Auctions (R&R at Journal of Economic Theory) (with Yi-Chun Chen)
adopts the optimal auction due to Myerson (1981) in response, we characterize both the buyer-optimal information structure, which maximizes the buyers' surplus, and the seller-worst information structure, which minimizes the seller's revenue. We translate both information design problems into finite-dimensional, constrained optimization problems in which one can explicitly solve for the optimal information structure. In contrast to the case with one buyer (Roesler and Szentes, 2017 and Du, 2018), we show that with two or more buyers, the symmetric buyer-optimal information structure is different from the symmetric seller-worst information structure. The good is always sold under the seller-worst information structure but not under the buyer-optimal information structure. Nevertheless, as the number of buyers goes to infinity, both symmetric information structures converge to no disclosure. We also show that in our ex ante symmetric setting, an asymmetric information structure is never seller-worst but can generate a strictly higher surplus for the buyers than the symmetric buyer-optimal information structure.
- Information Design with Rank Dependent Utility (with Yi-Chun Chen)
Robust Mechanism Design
- Informationally robust reduced-form auction design (with Yi-Chun Chen)