Multidimensional procurement auctions with unknown weights

This paper studies the consequences of holding a procurement auction when the principal chooses not to show its preferences. My paper extends the procurement auction model of Che (1993) to a situation where both the principal and the agents have private information. Thus, unknown parameters of both the principal and the agents leads to unclear reaction strategies. I show that an unknown weight on the principal’s valuation of quality leads to the production of to much quality and to high informational rent. A problem that can be reduced using a revelation mechanism. Having an unknown weight on quality gives rise to an analysis of a principal that can not fully commit to the outcome induced by the scoring rule. Therefore, my result apply to contract theory and it’s problems with imperfect commitment.Mechanism design, contract theory, multidimensional auctions