Theoretical Economics 20 (2025), 1323–1365

How best to incentivise disclosure? We study this question in a general model in which a technological breakthrough occurs at an uncertain time and is privately observed by an agent, and a principal must incentivise disclosure via her control of a payoff-relevant physical allocation. We uncover a deadline structure of optimal mechanisms: they have a simple deadline form in an important special case, and a graduated deadline structure in general. We apply our results to the design of unemployment insurance schemes.

Keywords: Dynamic mechanism design, delegation, disclosure, deadline

JEL classification: D82, E24, J65