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Nash Implementation Using Undominated Strategies

Econometrica 1991 59(2), 479
We study the problem of implementing social choice correspondences using the concept of undominated Nash equilibrium, i.e. Nash equilibrium in which no one uses a weakly dominated strategy. We show that this mild refinement of Nash equilibrium has a dramatic impact on the set of implementable correspondences. Our main result is that if there are at least three agents in the society, then any correspondence which satisfies the usual no veto power condition is implementable unless some agents are completely indifferent over all possible outcomes. Many common welfare criteria, such as the Pareto correspondence, and several familiar voting rules, such as majority and plurality rules, satisfy our conditions. This possibility result stands in sharp contrast to the more restrictive findings with implementation in either Nash equilibrium or subgame perfect equilibrium. We present several examples to illustrate the difference between undominated Nash implementation and implementation with alternative solution concepts.

Implementation with Incomplete Information in Exchange Economies

Econometrica 1989 57(1), 115
In this paper, we analyze the problem of designing incentive compatible mechanisms in pure exchange economic environments when agents have incomplete information. The equilibrium concept employed is Bayesian Nash equilibrium and the notion of implemantation is full implementation, which is stronger than the more commonly employed notion of truthful implementation. An allocation rule is truthfully implementable if there exists a direct mechanism to which truth telling is an equilibrium and which yields the allocation rule as its truthful equilibrium outcome. An allocation rule is fully implementable if there exists mechanism which yields the allocation rule as its unique equilibrium outcome. More generally, a set of allocation rules, or a social choice set, is fully implementable if there exist a mechanism whose equilibrium outcomes coincide with the set. This stronger notion of implemention avoids the well known problems of multiple equilibria which arise in direct revelation games. We develop a condition, termed Bayesian monotonicity, which we show is necessary for full implementation. An incentive compatibility condition is also necessary. We prove that Bayesian monotonicity and a slightly stronger incentive compatibility condition are sufficient for full implementation when there are at least three agents. We present several examples of allocation rules which do and do not satisfy our condition. One example is that of an allocation rule which is fully inplementable by an indirect mechanism, but for which every equivalent direct mechanism has multiple equilibrium outcomes.