Contextually Private Mechanisms
2026-08-28
A designer employs a dynamic protocol to elicit private information. Protocols produce a set of contextual privacy violations—information learned that may be superfluous given the context. A protocol is maximally contextually private if there is no protocol that produces a proper subset of the violations it produces, while implementing the choice rule. Contextual privacy violations arise when a choice rule makes some agents collectively, but not individually, pivotal. In auctions, designing for contextual privacy requires choosing an initial question posed to each agent and the order for querying agents. Ascending-join protocols are maximally contextually private for k-item Vickrey auctions. (JEL D44, D82)