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Mechanism Design with Financially Constrained Agents and Costly Verification

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  • Yunan Li

    (Department of Economics, City University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

A principal wishes to distribute an indivisible good to a population of budget-constrained agents. Both valuation and budget are an agent’s private information. The principal can inspect an agent’s budget through a costly verification process and punish an agent who makes a false statement. I characterize the direct surplus-maximizing mechanism. This direct mechanism can be implemented by a two-stage mechanism in which agents only report their budgets. Specifically, all agents report their budgets in the first stage. The principal then provides budget dependent cash subsidies to agents and assigns the goods randomly (with uniform probability) at budget-dependent prices. In the second stage, a resale market opens, but is regulated with budget-dependent sales taxes. Agents who report low budgets receive more subsidies in their initial purchases (the first stage), face higher taxes in the resale market (the second stage) and are inspected randomly. This implementation exhibits some of the features of some welfare programs, such as Singapore’s housing and development board.

Suggested Citation

  • Yunan Li, 2017. "Mechanism Design with Financially Constrained Agents and Costly Verification," PIER Working Paper Archive 17-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 18 Jan 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:17-001
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    Cited by:

    1. Li, Yunan, 2019. "Efficient mechanisms with information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 279-328.
    2. Yunan Li, 2017. "Efficient Mechanisms with Information Acquisition," PIER Working Paper Archive 16-007, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 23 Jun 2017.
    3. Jianxin Rong & Ning Sun & Dazhong Wang, 2019. "A New Evaluation Criterion for Allocation Mechanisms with Application to Vehicle License Allocations in China," The Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design, Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design, University of York, vol. 4(1), pages 39-86, November.
    4. Markos Epitropou & Rakesh Vohra, 2019. "Dynamic Mechanisms with Verification," PIER Working Paper Archive 19-002, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mechanism Design; Budget Constraints; Efficiency; Costly Verification;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D45 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Rationing; Licensing
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H42 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Private Goods

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