This paper considers an optimal renegotiation-proof dynamic Bayesian mechanism in which two privately informed players repeatedly have to take a joint action without resorting to side-payments. We provide a general framework which accommodates as special cases committee decision and collective insurance problems. Thus, we formally connect these separate strands of literature. We show: (i) first-best values can be arbitrarily approximated (but not achieved) when the players are sufficiently patient; (ii) our main result, the provision of intertemporal incentives necessarily leads to a dictatorial mechanism: in the long run the optimal scheme converges to the adoption of one player's favorite action. This can entail one agent becoming a permanent dictator or a possibility of having sporadic “regime shifts.”

Journal of Economic Theory V 182, P 402-432, 2019

William Fuchs , Satoshi Fukuda, Vinicius Nascimento Carrasco.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jet.2019.03.007