Keeping the Agents in the Dark: Competing Mechanisms, Private Disclosures, and the Revelation Principle

Attar AndreaCampioni EloisaMariotti ThomasPavan Alessandro
CEIS Research Paper
We study the design of market information in competing-mechanism games. We identify a new dimension, private disclosures, whereby the principals asymmetrically inform the agents of how their mechanisms operate. We show that private disclosures have two important effects. First, they can raise a principal's payoff guarantee against her competitors' threats. Second, they can support equilibrium outcomes and payoffs that cannot be supported with standard mechanisms. These results call for a novel approach to competing mechanisms, which we develop to identify a canonical game and a canonical class of equilibria, thereby establishing a new revelation principle for this class of environments.
 

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Number: 615
Keywords: Incomplete Information, Competing Mechanisms, Private Disclosures, Revelation Principle.
JEL codes: D82
Volume: 23
Issue: 8
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Revision Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2025