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We study the problem of a buyer (aka auctioneer) who gains stochastic rewards by procuring multiple units of a service or item from a pool of heterogeneous strategic agents. The reward obtained for a single unit from an allocated agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-04-30 Satyanath Bhat , Shweta Jain , Sujit Gujar , Y. Narahari

Finding optimal adversarial attack strategies is an important topic in reinforcement learning and the Markov decision process. Previous studies usually assume one all-knowing coordinator (attacker) for whom attacking different recipient…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-05 Ziqing Lu , Guanlin Liu , Lifeng Lai , Weiyu Xu

I study optimal disclosure policies in sequential contests. A contest designer chooses at which periods to publicly disclose the efforts of previous contestants. I provide results for a wide range of possible objectives for the contest…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2019-05-30 Toomas Hinnosaar

We study a contest in which $N$ players sequentially draw from a distribution as many times as they want at a fixed cost per draw, with no recall, and the highest accepted value wins a prize. In the unique symmetric equilibrium, the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-28 Emre Ozdenoren , Murat Erkurt

Bidding and acceptance strategies have a substantial impact on the outcome of negotiations in scenarios with linear additive and nonlinear utility functions. Over the years, it has become clear that there is no single best strategy for all…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-09-15 Bram M. Renting , Holger H. Hoos , Catholijn M. Jonker

This paper focuses on the coordination of a large population of dynamic agents with private information over multiple periods. Each agent maximizes the individual utility, while the coordinator determines the market rule to achieve group…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2015-10-05 Sen Li , Wei Zhang

Strategic classification studies the problem where self-interested individuals or agents manipulate their response to obtain favorable decision outcomes made by classifiers, typically turning to dishonest actions when they are less costly…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-07 Ziyuan Huang , Lina Alkarmi , Mingyan Liu

We analyze how firms should design wage contracts when workers collaborate in teams and effort costs depend on colleagues through a peer network. Performance-based compensation generates incentives that cascade through the organization,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-17 Marc Claveria-Mayol , Pau Milán , Nicolás Oviedo-Dávila

We study a variant of Vickrey's classic bottleneck model. In our model there are $n$ agents and each agent strategically chooses when to join a first-come-first-served observable queue. Agents dislike standing in line and they take actions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-10-09 Moshe Babaioff , Sigal Oren

We study the classic principal-agent model when the signal observed by the principal is chosen by the agent. We fully characterize the optimal information structure from an agent's perspective in a general moral hazard setting with limited…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-07-25 Majid Mahzoon , Ali Shourideh , Ariel Zetlin-Jones

In repeated games, such as auctions, players rely on autonomous learning agents to choose their actions. We study settings in which players have their agents make monetary transfers to other agents during play at their own expense, in order…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Yoav Kolumbus , Joe Halpern , Éva Tardos

We propose an adaptive incentive mechanism that learns the optimal incentives in environments where players continuously update their strategies. Our mechanism updates incentives based on each player's externality, defined as the difference…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Chinmay Maheshwari , Kshitij Kulkarni , Manxi Wu , Shankar Sastry

Recent developments in sequential experimental design look to construct a policy that can efficiently navigate the design space, in a way that maximises the expected information gain. Whilst there is work on achieving tractable policies for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-20 Yasir Zubayr Barlas , Kizito Salako

Modern recommendation systems rely on the wisdom of the crowd to learn the optimal course of action. This induces an inherent mis-alignment of incentives between the system's objective to learn (explore) and the individual users' objective…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-07-06 Gal Bahar , Rann Smorodinsky , Moshe Tennenholtz

AI systems often rely on two key components: a specified goal or reward function and an optimization algorithm to compute the optimal behavior for that goal. This approach is intended to provide value for a principal: the user on whose…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Simon Zhuang , Dylan Hadfield-Menell

We investigate a novel approach to resilient distributed optimization with quadratic costs in a multi-agent system prone to unexpected events that make some agents misbehave. In contrast to commonly adopted filtering strategies, we draw…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-02-11 Luca Ballotta , Giacomo Como , Jeff S. Shamma , Luca Schenato

We consider a problem of prediction based on opinions elicited from heterogeneous rational agents with private information. Making an accurate prediction with a minimal cost requires a joint design of the incentive mechanism and the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-02-25 Yuan Luo , Nihar B. Shah , Jianwei Huang , Jean Walrand

The widespread deployment of Machine Learning systems everywhere raises challenges, such as dealing with interactions or competition between multiple learners. In that goal, we study multi-agent sequential decision-making by considering…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Antoine Scheid , Etienne Boursier , Alain Durmus , Eric Moulines , Michael I. Jordan

A canonical setting for non-monetary online resource allocation is one where agents compete over multiple rounds for a single item per round, with i.i.d. valuations and additive utilities across rounds. With $n$ symmetric agents, a natural…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-01 David X. Lin , Giannis Fikioris , Siddhartha Banerjee , Éva Tardos

We consider active learning under incentive compatibility constraints. The main application of our results is to economic experiments, in which a learner seeks to infer the parameters of a subject's preferences: for example their attitudes…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-11-15 Federico Echenique , Siddharth Prasad