Research
Research
My work sits at the intersection of Coase and Hurwicz. From Coase, I take the view that institutions are defined by the allocation of rights and the organization of exchange. From Hurwicz, I take the mechanism-design question: how can institutions process private information and incentives to support efficient outcomes? I study how decision rights, information and surplus determination jointly shape implementability, efficiency and incentive compatibility.
This perspective leads me to revisit the Myerson–Satterthwaite result in bilateral trade and Green–Laffont in public-good provision. I ask how their conclusions depend on institutional arrangements in which mechanisms directly determine allocations, transfers and surplus division. My research explores what becomes possible when information aggregation, decision rights and surplus determination are institutionally separated.
Can the Coase theorem be compatible with private information? The conventional view, inspired by the Myerson--Satterthwaite impossibility, is that it cannot. My answer in this paper is that it can. I show that the impossibility stems from the mismatch between payoff-relevant decision rights and access to private information in the centralized direct mechanism.
I develop a meeting-assignment mechanism that uses reported valuations to identify trading feasibility, while leaving surplus determination to decentralized bargaining. Under a frictionless Coasean bargaining benchmark, the mechanism is universally Bayesian-Nash incentive-compatible without outside subsidies, induces an intrinsically singleton meeting allocation under general conditions, and implements socially efficient meeting assignment. The Coasean benchmark is sufficient but not necessary: Bayesian incentive compatibility extends to a broader class of report-sensitive bargaining protocols.
Conference presentations and acceptances: EWMES, Cyprus (2025); AMES–CSW, Abu Dhabi (2026); NASM, Atlanta (2026); EEA–ESEM, Dublin (2026).
This paper studies decentralized provision of harmless public goods under private information. I identify the pivotal-failure aversion rationale: a self-interested agent avoids actions that may cause the false failure of a provision opportunity she values when the requested contribution remains within her valuation.
I develop a residual-cost mechanism that supports efficient provision through individual feasibility questions, rather than valuation reports or assigned cost shares. Under pivotal-failure aversion, the mechanism preserves agents' monetary property rights, keeps feasible provision opportunities from being lost, and implements efficient provision in finite time whenever surplus is strictly positive.
Conference presentations and acceptances: ESAM, Adelaide (2026).