Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: Jul, 2001, Volume 69, Issue 4

Contracting with Imperfect Commitment and the Revelation Principle: The Single Agent Case

https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0262.00231
p. 1077-1098

Helmut Bester, Roland Strausz

This paper extends the revelation principle to environments in which the mechanism designer cannot fully commit to the outcome induced by the mechanism. We show that he may optimally use a direct mechanism under which truthful revelation is an optimal strategy for the agent. In contrast with the conventional revelation principle, however, the agent may not use this strategy with probability one. Our results apply to contracting problems between a principal and a single agent. By reducing such problems to well‐defined programming problems they provide a basic tool for studying imperfect commitment.


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