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: Nov, 2019, Volume 87, Issue 6

Strategically Simple Mechanisms

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA15897
p. 2003-2035

Tilman Börgers, Jiangtao Li

We define and investigate a property of mechanisms that we call “strategic simplicity,” and that is meant to capture the idea that, in strategically simple mechanisms, strategic choices require limited strategic sophistication. We define a mechanism to be strategically simple if choices can be based on first‐order beliefs about the other agents' preferences and first‐order certainty about the other agents' rationality alone, and there is no need for agents to form higher‐order beliefs, because such beliefs are irrelevant to the optimal strategies. All dominant strategy mechanisms are strategically simple. But many more mechanisms are strategically simple. In particular, strategically simple mechanisms may be more flexible than dominant strategy mechanisms in the bilateral trade problem and the voting problem.


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