Prior-Free Delegation

Terrence McGovern; Jan Benedikt Napp; Wenjun Zheng

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arXiv · 2609.31529

Prior-Free Delegation

Terrence McGovern·Jan Benedikt Napp·Wenjun Zheng

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Abstract

We consider a robust delegation problem in which the principal does not know the distribution from which the underlying state is drawn. The principal can choose a general randomized mechanism and maximizes her worst-case expected payoff over all state distributions. Our main result characterizes the robustly optimal mechanism. The mechanism has up to three regions: (i) accommodation, where the agent's ideal action is taken, (ii) calibrated randomization, where each type receives a distinct lottery, and (iii) pooling, where all types receive the same lottery. We then extend our model to a multidimensional setting in which preferences are additively separable and satisfy a cross-dimensional symmetry condition, and show that delegating separately across dimensions is robustly optimal.

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BibTeX RIS

Terrence McGovern, Jan Benedikt Napp, Wenjun Zheng. 2026-09-25. Prior-Free Delegation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.31529

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