On the Foundations of Ex Post Incentive-Compatible Mechanisms
研究在相互依赖价值且委托人几乎不了解代理人信念的稳健机制设计问题，发现特定条件下非事后激励相容机制能比任何事后激励相容机制获得更高期望收益，而小相互依赖时则相反。
This paper considers an interdependent-value robust mechanism design problem, where the principal has little knowledge about the agent’s belief. Although ex post incentive-compatible (EPIC) mechanisms can implement allocations without any knowledge about the agent’s belief, we show that, under a certain condition (order-reversing interdependence), there exists a non-EPIC mechanism that achieves a strictly higher expected revenue than any EPIC mechanism given whatever (admissible) belief structure the agent may enjoy. Conversely, with sufficiently small interdependence, such a non-EPIC mechanism does not exist: for some (admissible) belief structure, an EPIC mechanism achieves the highest expected revenue.