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.