Robust screening under ambiguity

Abstract

We consider the problem of screening where a seller puts up for sale an indivisible good, and a buyer with a valuation unknown to the seller wishes to acquire the good. We assume that the buyer valuations are represented as discrete types drawn from some distribution, which is also unknown to the seller. The seller is averse to possible mis-specification of types distribution, and considers the unknown type density as member of an ambiguity set and seeks an optimal pricing mechanism in a worst case sense. We specify four choices for the ambiguity set and derive the optimal mechanism in each case.