Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design,(), 2016, iv A Letter from the Editor H istory, illuminated by theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies, has shown that the institutions chosen by or imposed upon a society have a profound impact on its performance. The theory of mechanism and institution design is about how to devise new mechanisms or institutions, or improve existing ones, to better achieve desired economic or social outcomes. The challenge of design lies in the fact that individuals have different prefer­ences about how society allocates its scarce resources, and private information must implicitly or explicitly be revealed to realize society’s goals. The Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design seeks to provide an independent and peer-reviewed open-access online journal that will be a natu­ral English-language home for original analyses of mechanism and institution design. There are three compelling reasons for founding this new Journal. First, over the past few decades, mechanism and institution design has been one of the most flourishing and influential research areas, and we believe that it will continue to grow in importance. Second, we believe that mechanism and institution design can serve as a common language to bridge fields rang­ing from economics, politics and law, to computer science, mathematics, and engineering, improving communication and productivity. Third, we believe that open access journals are the future of scholarly publishing, and that an independent, non-commercial journal such as ours has even more advantages. The Internet has greatly enhanced the free and wide dissemination of knowl­edge, but it is most effective when access is open. The Journal aims to publish original articles that deal with the issues of designing, improving, analyzing and testing economic, financial, political, or social mechanisms and institutions. It seeks scientifically important and so­cially relevant research, whether theoretical or applied, and whether empiri­cal, experimental, historical, or practical. It strives to maintain a high standard for clarity of thought and expression. The Journal is published and owned by the Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design, a not-for-profit, unincorporated associa­tion devoted solely to the development of mechanism and institution design and the dissemination of scientific knowledge of the field. The Society tries to be self-supporting and run the Journal at a minimum cost by requiring only one author of each submitted paper to pay a modest membership fee of the Society to cover the cost of running the Journal. We are committed to han­dling every submitted paper as quickly as possible through a consistent and fair evaluation. Working together with our dedicated Editorial Board and professional col­leagues, we are confident that this journal will find a secure home in the sci­entific communities that contribute to mechanism and institution design. Zaifu Yang, York, December 16, 2016