The (No) Value of Commitment
Theoretical Economics
2025-10-10 v1
Abstract
I provide a sufficient condition under which a principal does not benefit from committing to a mechanism in economic models represented by a maximisation problem under constraints. These problems include mechanism design, principal-agent models or sender-receiver games. In principal-agent problems, this condition holds if the agent has a finite strategy space and the principal's value function is continuous in the mechanism.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.07994,
title = {The (No) Value of Commitment},
author = {Nathan Hancart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.07994},
year = {2025}
}