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Consider a principal who wants to search through a space of stochastic solutions for one maximizing their utility. If the principal cannot conduct this search on their own, they may instead delegate this problem to an agent with distinct…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-04 Curtis Bechtel , Shaddin Dughmi

Delegation covers a broad class of problems in which a principal doesn't have the resources or expertise necessary to complete a task by themselves, so they delegate the task to an agent whose interests may not be aligned with their own.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-12-07 Curtis Bechtel , Shaddin Dughmi

This paper studies delegation in a model of discrete choice. In the delegation problem, an uninformed principal must consult an informed agent to make a decision. Both the agent and principal have preferences over the decided-upon action…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Ali Khodabakhsh , Emmanouil Pountourakis , Samuel Taggart

In a delegation problem, a principal P with commitment power tries to pick one out of $n$ options. Each option is drawn independently from a known distribution. Instead of inspecting the options herself, P delegates the information…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-03-03 Pirmin Braun , Niklas Hahn , Martin Hoefer , Conrad Schecker

Decision-makers in high-stakes selection processes often face a fundamental choice: whether to make decisions themselves or to delegate authority to another entity whose incentives may only be partially aligned with their own. Such…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-01-16 Benjamin Fish , Diptangshu Sen , Juba Ziani

In delegation problems, a principal does not have the resources necessary to complete a particular task, so they delegate the task to an untrusted agent whose interests may differ from their own. Given any family of such problems and space…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Curtis Bechtel , Shaddin Dughmi , Neel Patel

A principal contracts with an agent through an informed delegate. Although the principal cannot directly mediate the interaction, she can restrict the menus of contracts the delegate may offer. We characterize the outcomes implementable…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-22 João Thereze , Udayan Vaidya

We consider a multi-agent delegation mechanism without money. In our model, given a set of agents, each agent has a fixed number of solutions which is exogenous to the mechanism, and privately sends a signal, e.g., a subset of solutions, to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-23 MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Keivan Rezaei , Suho Shin

A principal can restrict an agent's information (the persuasion problem) or restrict an agent's discretion (the delegation problem). We show that these problems are generally equivalent - solving one solves the other. We use tools from the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2019-02-08 Anton Kolotilin , Andriy Zapechelnyuk

We study a model of delegation in which a principal takes a multidimensional action and an agent has private information about a multidimensional state of the world. The principal can design any direct mechanism, including stochastic ones.…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-08-26 Andreas Kleiner

A principal designs an algorithm that generates a publicly observable prediction of a binary state. She must decide whether to act directly based on the prediction or to delegate the decision to an agent with private information but…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-02-22 Ruqing Xu

We show that in delegation problems, a principal benefits from belief misalignment vis-\`a-vis an agent when the latter can flexibly acquire costly information. The agent optimally succumbs to confirmatory learning, leading him to favor the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-30 Pavel Ilinov , Andrei Matveenko , Maxim Senkov , Egor Starkov

We present a study on a repeated delegated choice problem, which is the first to consider an online learning variant of Kleinberg and Kleinberg, EC'18. In this model, a principal interacts repeatedly with an agent who possesses an exogenous…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-15 MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Mohammad Mahdavi , Keivan Rezaei , Suho Shin

A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. Initially, the agent does not observe the state, but he can acquire information about it at a cost. We characterize the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-11-21 Ian Ball , Xin Gao

We analyze the optimal delegation problem between a principal and an agent, assuming that the latter has state-independent preferences. We demonstrate that if the principal is more risk-averse than the agent toward non-status quo options,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-09-19 Xiaoxiao Hu , Haoran Lei

Many settings of interest involving humans and machines -- from virtual personal assistants to autonomous vehicles -- can naturally be modelled as principals (humans) delegating to agents (machines), which then interact with each other on…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-08-07 Oliver Sourbut , Lewis Hammond , Harriet Wood

A proposer requires the approval of a veto player to change a status quo. Preferences are single peaked. Proposer is uncertain about Vetoer's ideal point. We study Proposer's optimal mechanism without transfers. Vetoer is given a menu, or a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-12-29 Navin Kartik , Andreas Kleiner , Richard Van Weelden

We study a setting in which a principal selects an agent to execute a collection of tasks according to a specified priority sequence. Agents, however, have their own individual priority sequences according to which they wish to execute the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Donya G. Dobakhshari , Lav R. Varshney , Vijay Gupta

When should we delegate decisions to AI systems? While the value alignment literature has developed techniques for shaping AI values, less attention has been paid to how to determine, under uncertainty, when imperfect alignment is good…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Daniel A. Herrmann , Abinav Chari , Isabelle Qian , Sree Sharvesh , B. A. Levinstein

In this paper we revisit the basic variant of the classical secretary problem. We propose a new approach in which we separate between an agent that evaluates the secretary performance and one that has to make the hiring decision. The…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-05-27 Niklas Hahn , Martin Hoefer , Rann Smorodinsky
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