This paper studies a model of mechanism design with transfers where agents' preferences need not be quasilinear. In such a model, (1) we characterize dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanisms using a monotonicity property; (2) we establish a revenue uniqueness result: for every dominant strategy implementable allocation rule, there is a unique payment rule that can implement it; and (3) we show that every dominant strategy incentive compatible, individually rational, and revenue-maximizing mechanism must charge zero transfer for the worst alternative (outside option). These results are applicable in a wide variety of problems (single object auction, multiple object auction, public good provision etc.) under suitable richness of type space. In particular, our results can be applied to models where preferences of agents are arbitrarily small perturbations of quasilinear preferences and illustrate the (non)-robustness of some of the classic results in mechanism design with quasilinearity. We show various applications of our results.

中文翻译：

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无拟线性的机构设计

本文研究了一种带有转移的机制设计模型，其中代理的偏好不必是拟线性的。在这样的模型中，（1）我们使用单调性来表征优势策略激励兼容机制；(2)我们建立收益唯一性结果：对于每一个优势策略可实施的分配规则，都有一个唯一的支付规则可以实施；(3) 我们表明，每个优势策略激励兼容、个体理性和收入最大化机制必须对最坏的选择（外部选项）收取零转移。在适当丰富的类型空间下，这些结果适用于各种各样的问题（单一对象拍卖、多对象拍卖、公共物品提供等）。特别是，我们的结果可以应用于代理的偏好是拟线性偏好的任意小扰动的模型，并说明了具有拟线性的机制设计中一些经典结果的（非）稳健性。我们展示了我们结果的各种应用。