Aligned Delegation

摘要

A principal delegates multiple decisions to an agent, wno nas private information relevant to each decision. The principal is uncertain about the agent's preferences. I solve for max-min optimal mechanisms-those which maximize the principal's payoff against the worst case agent preference types. These mechanisms are characterized by a property I call "aligned delegation ": all agent types play identically, as if they shared the principal's preferences. Max-min optimal mechanisms may take the simple forms of ranking mecha- nisms, budgets, or sequential quotas.