IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/120364.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Information Design Shapes Optimal Selling Mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Pham, Hien

Abstract

A monopolistic seller jointly designs allocation rules and (new) information about a pay-off relevant state to a buyer with private types. When the new information flips the ranking of willingness to pay across types, a screening menu of prices and threshold disclosures is optimal. Conversely, when its impact is marginal, bunching via a single posted price and threshold disclosure is (approximately) optimal. While information design expands the scope for random mechanisms to outperform their deterministic counterparts, its presence leads to an equivalence result regarding sequential versus. static screening.

Suggested Citation

  • Pham, Hien, 2023. "How Information Design Shapes Optimal Selling Mechanisms," MPRA Paper 120364, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Mar 2024.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:120364
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/120364/1/MPRA_paper_120364.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    2. Battaglini, Marco & Lamba, Rohit, 2019. "Optimal dynamic contracting: the first-order approach and beyond," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(4), November.
    3. Bergemann, Dirk & Wambach, Achim, 2015. "Sequential information disclosure in auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 1074-1095.
    4. Hao Li & Xianwen Shi, 2017. "Discriminatory Information Disclosure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3363-3385, November.
    5. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    6. Krähmer, Daniel & Strausz, Roland, 2015. "Ex post information rents in sequential screening," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 257-273.
    7. Myerson, Roger B, 1986. "Multistage Games with Communication," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 323-358, March.
    8. Bergemann, Dirk & Pesendorfer, Martin, 2007. "Information structures in optimal auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 580-609, November.
    9. Péter Eső & Balázs Szentes, 2007. "Optimal Information Disclosure in Auctions and the Handicap Auction," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 705-731.
    10. Anton Kolotilin & Tymofiy Mylovanov & Andriy Zapechelnyuk & Ming Li, 2017. "Persuasion of a Privately Informed Receiver," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1949-1964, November.
    11. Marco Battaglini, 2005. "Long-Term Contracting with Markovian Consumers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 637-658, June.
    12. Pascal Courty & Li Hao, 2000. "Sequential Screening," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 697-717.
    13. Bang, Se Hoon & Kim, Jaesoo, 2013. "Price discrimination via information provision," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 215-224.
    14. Skreta, Vasiliki, 2006. "Mechanism design for arbitrary type spaces," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 293-299, May.
    15. Lewis, Tracy R & Sappington, David E M, 1994. "Supplying Information to Facilitate Price Discrimination," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(2), pages 309-327, May.
    16. Alessandro Pavan & Ilya Segal & Juuso Toikka, 2014. "Dynamic Mechanism Design: A Myersonian Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(2), pages 601-653, March.
    17. Daniel Krähmer & Roland Strausz, 2015. "Optimal Sales Contracts with Withdrawal Rights," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 762-790.
    18. Zhu, Shuguang, 2023. "Private disclosure with multiple agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Pham, Hien, 2023. "How Information Design Shapes Optimal Selling Mechanisms," MPRA Paper 120462, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 Mar 2024.
    2. Pham, Hien, 2023. "How Information Design Shapes Optimal Selling Mechanisms," MPRA Paper 120989, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Mar 2024.
    3. von Wangenheim, Jonas, 2017. "Consumer-Optimal Information Design," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 53, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    4. Hao Li & Xianwen Shi, 2017. "Discriminatory Information Disclosure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3363-3385, November.
    5. Krähmer, Daniel & Strausz, Roland, 2017. "Sequential versus static screening: An equivalence result," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 317-328.
    6. Boaz Zik, 2023. "Efficient sequential screening with informational externalities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(2), pages 567-590, February.
    7. Lu, Jingfeng & Wang, Zijia, 2021. "Optimal selling mechanisms with buyer price search," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    8. Huiyi Guo & Wei He & Bin Liu, 2022. "Learning by Consuming: Optimal Pricing with Endogenous Information Provision," Papers 2209.01453, arXiv.org.
    9. Jonas von Wangenheim, 2022. "Optimal Information Design of Online Marketplaces with Return Rights," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2022_352v2, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany, revised Apr 2024.
    10. Bergemann, Dirk & Pavan, Alessandro, 2015. "Introduction to Symposium on Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 679-701.
    11. Terstiege, Stefan, 2016. "Gathering imperfect information before signing a contract," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 70-87.
    12. Liu, Bin & Liu, Dongri & Lu, Jingfeng, 2020. "Shifting supports in Esö and Szentes (2007)," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    13. Krähmer, Daniel, 2020. "Information disclosure and full surplus extraction in mechanism design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    14. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Pavan, 2015. "Introduction to JET Symposium Issue on "Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design"," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2016, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    15. Thomas Mettral, 2018. "Deterministic versus stochastic contracts in a dynamic principal-agent model," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 6(2), pages 209-218, October.
    16. Maxim Ivanov, 2021. "Optimal monotone signals in Bayesian persuasion mechanisms," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(3), pages 955-1000, October.
    17. Bergemann, Dirk & Wambach, Achim, 2015. "Sequential information disclosure in auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 1074-1095.
    18. Krähmer, Daniel & Strausz, Roland, 2015. "Ex post information rents in sequential screening," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 257-273.
    19. Krähmer, Daniel & Kováč, Eugen, 2016. "Optimal sequential delegation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 849-888.
    20. Herbst, Holger, 2015. "Pricing Heterogeneous Goods under Ex Post Private Information," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 01/2015, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    mechanism design; information design; sequential screening; random mechanisms; bunching.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:120364. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.