SMU SOE Seminar Series (April 2, 2026): Screening for Choice Sets

TOPIC:

ABSTRACT

We study a screening problem in which an agent privately knows which actions or technologies are feasible and can disclose only a subset to a principal.

Once disclosed, feasible options are verifiable and their payoff consequences are publicly known, so private information concerns feasibility rather than payoffs, misreporting restricts the principal’s choices directly rather than distorting her beliefs. Assuming feasible sets are ordered by inclusion, we establish a simple characterization of the optimal mechanism, where the principal either behaves as if there is no asymmetric information or locally provides no reward for better proposals. We derive comparative statics and illustrate the framework in applications to managing persuasion, action elicitation, and production-technology elicitation.

Keywords: Screening, Choice Sets, Set Inclusion Order.

JEL: D81, D86.

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