IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v122y2020icp290-317.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consulting collusive experts

Author

Listed:
  • Mookherjee, Dilip
  • Motta, Alberto
  • Tsumagari, Masatoshi

Abstract

In designing a contract with an agent privately informed about its cost, should a principal consult an expert who has already received a partially informative signal of the agent's cost? The expert has a prior relationship with the agent, facilitating (weak) ex ante collusion which coordinates their participation and reporting decisions with accompanying side-payments. While delegating contracting with the agent to the expert is never profitable, we show that consulting the expert is typically valuable. Changes in bargaining power within the coalition have no effect, while altruism of the expert towards the agent makes the principal worse off.

Suggested Citation

  • Mookherjee, Dilip & Motta, Alberto & Tsumagari, Masatoshi, 2020. "Consulting collusive experts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 290-317.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:122:y:2020:i:c:p:290-317
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2020.04.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825620300646
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2020.04.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dequiedt, Vianney, 2007. "Efficient collusion in optimal auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 302-323, September.
    2. Juan Ortner & Sylvain Chassang, 2018. "Making Corruption Harder: Asymmetric Information, Collusion, and Crime," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(5), pages 2108-2133.
    3. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1991. "Perfect Bayesian equilibrium and sequential equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 236-260, April.
    4. Strausz, Roland, 2006. "Deterministic versus stochastic mechanisms in principal-agent models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 306-314, May.
    5. Lucia Quesada, 2005. "Collusion as an Informed Principal Problem," Game Theory and Information 0504002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    7. Che, Yeon-Koo & Condorelli, Daniele & Kim, Jinwoo, 2018. "Weak cartels and collusion-proof auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 398-435.
    8. Antoine Faure-Grimaud & Jean-Jacques Laffont & David Martimort, 2003. "Collusion, Delegation and Supervision with Soft Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(2), pages 253-279.
    9. Milton Harris & Artur Raviv, 2008. "A Theory of Board Control and Size," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1797-1832, July.
    10. Che, Yeon-Koo & Kim, Jinwoo, 2009. "Optimal collusion-proof auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 565-603, March.
    11. Baron, David P & Myerson, Roger B, 1982. "Regulating a Monopolist with Unknown Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 911-930, July.
    12. Celik, Gorkem, 2009. "Mechanism design with collusive supervision," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 69-95, January.
    13. Yeon-Koo Che & Jinwoo Kim, 2006. "Robustly Collusion-Proof Implementation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 1063-1107, July.
    14. Baliga, Sandeep & Sjostrom, Tomas, 1998. "Decentralization and Collusion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 196-232, December.
    15. Dilip Mookherjee & Masatoshi Tsumagari, 2004. "The Organization of Supplier Networks: Effects of Delegation and Intermediation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1179-1219, July.
    16. Jean-Jacques Laffont & David Martimort, 1997. "Collusion under Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 875-912, July.
    17. Jullien, Bruno, 2000. "Participation Constraints in Adverse Selection Models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-47, July.
    18. Jean-Jacques Laffont & David Martimort, 2000. "Mechanism Design with Collusion and Correlation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(2), pages 309-342, March.
    19. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    20. Tirole, Jean, 1986. "Hierarchies and Bureaucracies: On the Role of Collusion in Organizations," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 181-214, Fall.
    21. ,, 2008. "Auction design in the presence of collusion," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(3), September.
    22. Celik, Gorkem & Peters, Michael, 2011. "Equilibrium rejection of a mechanism," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 375-387.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Henke & Fahad Khalil & Jacques Lawarree, 2022. "Honest agents in a corrupt equilibrium," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 762-783, August.
    2. Mookherjee, Dilip & Tsumagari, Masatoshi, 2023. "Regulatory mechanism design with extortionary collusion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    3. Mehdi Ayouni & Franck Bien & Thomas Lanzi, 2023. "The failure of the delegation principle in a principal-agent model with transfers," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 43(1), pages 518-525.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Correia-da-Silva, João, 2020. "Self-rejecting mechanisms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 434-457.
    2. Asseyer, Andreas, 2020. "Collusion and delegation under information control," Discussion Papers 2020/3, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    3. Celik, Gorkem, 2009. "Mechanism design with collusive supervision," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 69-95, January.
    4. Asseyer, Andreas, 2016. "Optimal Information Disclosure and Collusion," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145779, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Asseyer, Andreas, 2020. "Collusion and delegation under information control," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(4), November.
    6. von Negenborn, Colin & Pollrich, Martin, 2020. "Sweet lemons: Mitigating collusion in organizations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    7. Mookherjee, Dilip & Tsumagari, Masatoshi, 2023. "Regulatory mechanism design with extortionary collusion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    8. Nicolas Gruyer, 2008. "Optimal Auctions when a seller is bound to sell to collusive bidders (new version of "using lotteries ...")," Economics Working Papers 06, LEEA (air transport economics laboratory), ENAC (french national civil aviation school).
    9. Che, Yeon-Koo & Kim, Jinwoo, 2009. "Optimal collusion-proof auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 565-603, March.
    10. Nicolas Gruyer, 2009. "Optimal Auctions When A Seller Is Bound To Sell To Collusive Bidders," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 835-850, December.
    11. Che,Y.-K. & Kim,J., 2004. "Collusion-proof implementation of optimal mechanisms," Working papers 4, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    12. Bilgehan Karabay, 2017. "Optimal Regulation of Multinationals under Collusion," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(8), pages 1687-1706, August.
    13. Meng, Dawen & Tian, Guoqiang, 2008. "Nonlinear Pricing with Arbitrage: On the Role of Correlation," MPRA Paper 41207, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Celik, Gorkem, 2004. "Counter Marginalization of Information Rents under Collusion," Microeconomics.ca working papers celik-04-01-23-02-48-07, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 27 Jan 2008.
    15. Che, Yeon-Koo & Condorelli, Daniele & Kim, Jinwoo, 2018. "Weak cartels and collusion-proof auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 398-435.
    16. Dutta, Rohan & Levine, David Knudsen & Modica, Salvatore, 2018. "Collusion constrained equilibrium," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    17. Fahad Khalil & Jacques Lawarrée & Troy J. Scott, 2015. "Private monitoring, collusion, and the timing of information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(4), pages 872-890, October.
    18. De Chiara, Alessandro & Livio, Luca & Ponce, Jorge, 2018. "Flexible and mandatory banking supervision," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 86-104.
    19. Zheng, Charles Z., 2019. "Bidding collusion without passive updating," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 70-77.
    20. Dawen Meng & Guoqiang Tian & Zhe Yang, 2017. "Two-agent collusion-proof implementation with correlation and arbitrage," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 21(3), pages 177-229, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mechanism design; Collusion; Delegation; Expert;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:122:y:2020:i:c:p:290-317. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.