About

Bart Lipman is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Boston University. His contact information includes an email at blipman@bu.edu, a phone number (617) 353-2995, and an office located in Room 556 at 270 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215. The available page content does not provide additional details about his research focus, background, or key contributions.

Research topics

• Mathematical economics
• Economics
• Computer science
• Microeconomics
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Mechanism design for acquisition of/stochastic evidence

  Theoretical Economics · 2026-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We explore two interrelated models of “hard information.” In the evidence‐acquisition model , an agent with private information searches for evidence to show the principal about her type. In the signal‐choice model , a privately informed agent chooses an action generating a random signal whose realization may be correlated with her type. The signal‐choice model is a special case, and as we show, under certain conditions, a reduced form of the evidence‐acquisition model. We develop tools for characterizing optimal mechanisms for these models by giving conditions under which some aspects of the principal's optimal choices can be identified only from the information structure, without regard to the utility functions or the principal's priors.

  PublisherDOI

• Evidence in Games and Mechanisms

  Annual Review of Economics · 2026-03-13

  articleSenior author

  We survey theoretical work on the use of evidence, including work in game theory and in mechanism design.

  PublisherDOI

• Why is language vague?

  International Journal of Game Theory · 2025-03-06 · 45 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Acquisition of/stochastic evidence

  OpenBU (Boston University) · 2022-04-06

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We explore two highly interrelated models of "hard information." In the evidence-acquisition model, an agent with private information searches for evidence to show to the principal about her type. In the signal-choice model, a privately informed agent chooses an action which generates a random signal whose realization may be correlated with her type. We show that the signal-choice model is a special case and, under certain conditions, a reduced form of the evidence-acquisition model. We develop tools for characterizing optimal mechanisms for these models by giving conditions under which some aspects of the principal's optimal choices can be identified only from the information structure, without regard to the utility functions or the principal's priors. We also give a novel result on conditions under which there is no value to commitment for the principal.

  Publisher

• Mechanisms With Evidence: Commitment and Robustness

  Econometrica · 2019-01-01 · 74 citations

  articleSenior author

  We show that in a class of I ‐agent mechanism design problems with evidence, commitment is unnecessary, randomization has no value, and robust incentive compatibility has no cost. In particular, for each agent i , we construct a simple disclosure game between the principal and agent i where the equilibrium strategies of the agents in these disclosure games give their equilibrium strategies in the game corresponding to the mechanism but where the principal is not committed to his response. In this equilibrium, the principal obtains the same payoff as in the optimal mechanism with commitment. As an application, we show that certain costly verification models can be characterized using equilibrium analysis of an associated model of evidence.

  PublisherDOI

• Unforeseen Contingencies

  The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics · 2018-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  While unforeseen contingencies – possible events that agents do not think of when planning or contracting – are often said to greatly affect the nature of contracting, we lack useful formal models. Most of the existing models boil down to assuming that agents give zero probability to some events that might actually occur, an approach which is not particularly useful for studying the effects of unforeseen contingencies on contracting.

  PublisherDOI

• Rosenthal, Robert W. (1944–2002)

  The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics · 2018-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Robert W. Rosenthal (1944–2002) was an economic theorist whose thoughtful papers inspired a wide range of new ideas. As Radner and Ray (2003) point out, Rosenthal (1978) gives one of the first formal statements of the revelation principle, a result noted in Myerson’s first paper (1979) on the subject. Rosenthal (1979) initiated the study of repeated games with varying opponents, a modelling device used by Milgrom et al. (1990), Kandori (1992), and others to study social norms and other issues. He also wrote influential papers on pricing (Rosenthal 1980, 1982), multi-unit auctions (Krishna and Rosenthal 1996), purification of mixed strategy equilibria (Radner and Rosenthal 1982; Aumann et al. 1983), sovereign debt (Fernandez and Rosenthal 1990), analysis of experimental data (Brown and Rosenthal 1990), and many other topics.

  PublisherDOI

• Disclosure and Choice

  The Review of Economic Studies · 2017-10-30 · 58 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  An agent chooses among projects with random outcomes. His payoff is increasing in the outcome and in an observer's expectation of the outcome. With some probability, the agent can disclose the true outcome to the observer. We show that choice is inefficient: the agent favors riskier projects even with lower expected returns. If information can be disclosed by a challenger who prefers lower beliefs of the observer, the chosen project is excessively risky when the agent has better access to information, excessively risk{averse when the challenger has better access, and efficient otherwise. We also characterize the agent's worst-case equilibrium payoff.

  PublisherDOI

• Mechanisms with Evidence: Commitment and Robustness

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2017-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We show that in a class of I-agent mechanism design problems with evidence, commitment is unnecessary, randomization has no value, and robust incentive compatibility has no cost. In particular, for each agent i, we construct a simple disclosure game between the principal and agent i where the equilibrium strategies of the agents in these disclosure games give their equilibrium strategies in the game corresponding to the mechanism but where the principal is not committed to his response. In this equilibrium, the principal obtains the same payo as in the optimal mechanism with commitment. As an application, we show that certain costly veri cation models can be characterized using equilibrium analysis of an associated model of evidence.

  OA PDF

• An elementary proof of the optimality of threshold mechanisms

  OpenBU (Boston University) · 2015-07-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Recent grants

• Topics in Economic Theory

  NSF · $288k · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Eddie Dekel

  20 shared

• Elchanan Ben-Porath

  12 shared

• Mark Bagnoli

  Purdue University System

  9 shared

• Aldo Rustichini

  7 shared

• Ruqu Wang

  Queen's University

  6 shared

• James Bergin

  City University of Hong Kong

  5 shared

• Sugato Bhattacharyya

  Ross School

  2 shared

• Roger Gordon

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Michigan

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Fellow of the Game Theory Society
• Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory