Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/253512 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Theoretical Economics [ISSN:] 1555-7561 [Volume:] 16 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] The Econometric Society [Place:] New Haven, CT [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 381-402
Publisher: 
The Econometric Society, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
Each period, a principal must assign one of two agents to a new task. Profit is stochastically higher when the agent is qualified for the task, but the principal cannot observe qualification. Her only decision is which of the two agents to assign, if any, given the public history of selections and profits, but she cannot commit to any rule. While she maximizes expected discounted profits, each agent maximizes his expected discounted selection probabilities. We fully characterize when the principal's first-best payoff is attainable in equilibrium, and identify a simple, belief-free, strategy profile achieving this first-best whenever feasible. Addionally, we provide a partial characterization of the case with many agents and discuss how our analysis extends to other variations of the game.
Subjects: 
Dynamic mechanism design without commitment
dynamic mechanism design without transfers
JEL: 
C73
D23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.