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Related papers: Contract theory in a VUCA world

200 papers

We study hidden-action principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (called contract) so as to incentivize the agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. In…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-08-18 Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

This paper considers the hidden-action model of the principal-agent problem, in which a principal incentivizes an agent to work on a project using a contract. We investigate whether contracts with bounded payments are learnable and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Yurong Chen , Zhaohua Chen , Xiaotie Deng , Zhiyi Huang

We introduce a class of robust control problems formulated in min-max form, in which the principal agent is viewed as a central planner facing Nature. The agent's cost is a nonlinear function of all its possible realizations, encompassing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-24 François Delarue , Pierre Lavigne

We study a principal-agent problem with adverse selection, where the principal does not know the agent's true cost but must design a contract to optimize a specific criterion. Unlike standard screening frameworks that allow for…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-19 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Ibrahim Ekren , Liwei Huang

This paper addresses the problem of utility maximization under uncertain parameters. In contrast with the classical approach, where the parameters of the model evolve freely within a given range, we constrain them via a penalty function. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-08 Ivan Guo , Nicolas Langrené , Grégoire Loeper , Wei Ning

We investigate the existence of an optimal policy to monitor a mean field systems of agents managing a risky project under moral hazard with accidents modeled by L\'evy processes magnified by the law of the project. We provide a general…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-25 Thibaut Mastrolia , Jiacheng Zhang

We are considering the problem of optimal portfolio delegation between an investor and a portfolio manager under a random default time. We focus on a novel variation of the Principal-Agent problem adapted to this framework. We address the…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2024-10-18 Alberto Gennaro , Thibaut Mastrolia

Considering that the decision-making environment faced by reinforcement learning (RL) agents is full of Knightian uncertainty, this paper describes the exploratory state dynamics equation in Knightian uncertainty to study the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-27 Ziyu Li , Chen Fei , Weiyin Fei

We study a moral hazard problem with adverse selection: a risk-neutral agent can directly control the output distribution and possess private information about the production environment. The principal designs a menu of contracts satisfying…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-08 Siwen Liu

The existence of optimal contracts of the principal-agent problem is a long-standing problem. According to the general framework in Cvitani\'c et al. [2], this existence can be derived from the existence of a classical solution to a…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2025-03-19 Xinfu Chen , Shuaijie Qian , Guan Qiao

In a situation of moral hazard, this paper investigates the problem of Principal with $n$ Agents when the number of Agents $n$ goes to infinity. There is competition between the Agents expressed by the fact that they optimize their utility…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-09-06 Mao Fabrice Djete

We study a continuous time contracting model in which a principal hires a risk averse agent to manage a project over a finite horizon and provides sequential payments whose timing is endogenously determined. The resulting nonzero-sum…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-12-01 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Ibrahim Ekren , Liwei Huang

We study hidden-action principal-agent problems with multiple agents. Unlike previous work, we consider a general setting in which each agent has an arbitrary number of actions, and the joint action induces outcomes according to an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Federico Cacciamani , Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a contract between a public entity and a consortium, in which the public outsources the construction and the maintenance of an equipment (hospital, university, prison...). One drawback of this contract is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-03-07 Ishak Hajjej , Caroline Hillairet , Mohamed Mnif , Monique Pontier

We consider numerical resolution of principal-agent (PA) problems in continuous time. We formulate a generic PA model with continuous and lump payments and a multi-dimensional strategy of the agent. To tackle the resulting…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Michael Ludkovski , Changgen Xie , Zimu Zhu

We consider a robust switching control problem. The controller only observes the evolution of the state process, and thus uses feedback (closed-loop) switching strategies, a non standard class of switching controls introduced in this paper.…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-07-04 Erhan Bayraktar , Andrea Cosso , Huyen Pham

The ad hoc coordination problem is to design an autonomous agent which is able to achieve optimal flexibility and efficiency in a multiagent system with no mechanisms for prior coordination. We conceptualise this problem formally using a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-06-04 Stefano V. Albrecht , Subramanian Ramamoorthy

Linear contracts are ubiquitous in practice, yet optimal contract theory often prescribes complex, nonlinear structures. We provide a distributional robustness justification for linear contracts. We study a principal-agent problem where the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Shiliang Zuo

In this article, we employ a principal-agent model to analyze optimal contract design in a monopolistic reinsurance market under adverse selection with a continuum of insurer types. Instead of using the classical expected utility framework,…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-01-06 Ka Chun Cheung , Sheung Chi Phillip Yam , Fei Lung Yuen , Yiying Zhang

In the principal-agent problem formulated by Myerson'82, agents have private information (type) and make private decisions (action), both of which are unobservable to the principal. Myerson pointed out an elegant linear programming solution…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Jiarui Gan , Minbiao Han , Jibang Wu , Haifeng Xu