Mechanism Design with Moderate Evidence Cost

This paper addresses how a moderate evidence disclosure cost can be incorporated into mechanism-design analysis. The paper shows that in public-action settings with transferable utility one can restrict attention to a class of three-stage dynamic mechanisms. Under complete information with two or more players, a version of this type of mechanism can be used to eliminate evidence production in equilibrium. The paper also provides conditions on the evidence environment under which the class of mechanisms studied in Bull and Watson (2004) is equivalent to those considered here.