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We study the problem of a principal who wants to influence an agent's observable action, subject to an ex-post budget. The agent has a private type determining their cost function. This paper endogenizes the value of the resource driving…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-04-25 Nicole Immorlica , Nicholas Wu , Brendan Lucier

Many scenarios where agents with restrictions compete for resources can be cast as maximum matching problems on bipartite graphs. Our focus is on resource allocation problems where agents may have restrictions that make them incompatible…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-09-13 Yohai Trabelsi , Abhijin Adiga , Sarit Kraus , S. S. Ravi

We study a robust contract design problem with deferred inspection, in which a principal allocates a scarce resource to an agent, observes the agent's realized outcome ex post at negligible cost, and conditions transfers on this information…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-12 Halil I. Bayrak , Martin Bichler

Recent work has proposed artificial intelligence (AI) models that can learn to decide whether to make a prediction for an instance of a task or to delegate it to a human by considering both parties' capabilities. In simulations with…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2023-03-17 Patrick Hemmer , Monika Westphal , Max Schemmer , Sebastian Vetter , Michael Vössing , Gerhard Satzger

A new class of multi agent single machine scheduling problems is introduced, where each job is associated with a self interested agent with a utility function decreasing in completion time. We aim to achieve a fair solution by maximizing…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Gaia Nicosia , Andrea Pacifici , Ulrich Pferschy

We introduce a stochastic principal-agent model. A principal and an agent interact in a stochastic environment, each privy to observations about the state not available to the other. The principal has the power of commitment, both to elicit…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-13 Jiarui Gan , Rupak Majumdar , Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanovic

We examine vote delegation when preferences of agents are private information. One group of agents (delegators) does not want to participate in voting and abstains under conventional voting or can delegate its votes to the other group…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-10-26 Hans Gersbach , Akaki Mamageishvili , Manvir Schneider

The emergent behavior of a distributed system is conditioned by the information available to the local decision-makers. Therefore, one may expect that providing decision-makers with more information will improve system performance; in this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-23 Bryce L. Ferguson , Dario Paccagnan , Jason R. Marden

A principal must decide between two options. Which one she prefers depends on the private information of two agents. One agent always prefers the first option; the other always prefers the second. Transfers are infeasible. One application…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-05-24 Deniz Kattwinkel , Axel Niemeyer , Justus Preusser , Alexander Winter

We study the problem of collective tree exploration in which a team of $k$ mobile agents must collectively visit all nodes of an unknown tree in as few moves as possible. The agents all start from the root and discover adjacent edges as…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Romain Cosson , Laurent Massoulié

In this work we are concerned with the design of efficient mechanisms while eliciting limited information from the agents. First, we study the performance of sampling approximations in facility location games. Our key result is to show that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-08-26 Ioannis Anagnostides , Dimitris Fotakis , Panagiotis Patsilinakos

We study the problem of delegated choice with inspection cost (DCIC), which is a variant of the delegated choice problem by Kleinberg and Kleinberg (EC'18) as well as an extension of the Pandora's box problem with nonobligatory inspection…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-16 Mohammad T. Hajiaghayi , Piotr Krysta , Mohammad Mahdavi , Suho Shin

We study Bayesian automated mechanism design in unstructured dynamic environments, where a principal repeatedly interacts with an agent, and takes actions based on the strategic agent's report of the current state of the world. Both the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-05-14 Hanrui Zhang , Vincent Conitzer

We analyze a two-period principal-agent model in which the principal faces a budget constraint, and the agent's private costs of performing tasks across the two periods may be correlated. We examine the optimal design of the reward scheme…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-30 Eilon Solan , Avraham Tabbach , Chang Zhao

We consider settings where an uninformed principal must hear arguments from two better-informed agents, corresponding to two possible courses of action that they argue for. The arguments are verifiable in the sense that the true state of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Alexander Heckett , Vincent Conitzer

In this paper, a novel distributed optimization framework has been proposed. The key idea is to convert optimization problems into optimal control problems where the objective of each agent is to design the current control input minimizing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-01 Ziyuan Guo , Yue Sun , Yeming Xu , Liping Zhang , Huanshui Zhang

In this paper we study the problem of allocating a scarce resource among several players (or agents). A central decision maker wants to maximize the total utility of all agents. However, such a solution may be unfair for one or more agents…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-11-21 Gaia Nicosia , Andrea Pacifici , Ulrich Pferschy

This paper explores the economic interactions within modern crowdsourcing markets. In these markets, employers issue requests for tasks, platforms facilitate the recruitment of crowd workers, and workers complete tasks for monetary rewards.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Tian Bai , Yiding Feng , Yaohao Liu , Mengfan Ma , Mingyu Xiao

We study incentive design when multiple principals simultaneously design mechanisms for their respective teams in environments with strategic spillovers. In this environment, each principal's set of incentive-compatible mechanisms--those…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-11 Brian Roberson

The Bayesian persuasion paradigm of strategic communication models interaction between a privately-informed agent, called the sender, and an ignorant but rational agent, called the receiver. The goal is typically to design a (near-)optimal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-21 Ronen Gradwohl , Niklas Hahn , Martin Hoefer , Rann Smorodinsky