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We study multi-agent contracts, in which a principal delegates a task to multiple agents and incentivizes them to exert effort. Prior research has mostly focused on maximizing the principal's utility, often resulting in highly disparate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-26 Ke Ding , Bo Li , Ankang Sun

We study hidden-action principal-agent problems with multiple agents. These are problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme in order to incentivize some agents to take costly, unobservable actions that lead…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-02-01 Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We examine hypothesis testing within a principal-agent framework, where a strategic agent, holding private beliefs about the effectiveness of a product, submits data to a principal who decides on approval. The principal employs a hypothesis…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-06 Safwan Hossain , Yatong Chen , Yiling Chen

In this paper we consider a principal agent problem where the agent is allowed to quit, by incurring a cost. When the current agent quits the job, the principal will hire a new one, possibly with a different type. We characterize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-04 Jianfeng Zhang , Zimu Zhu

Closeness is a global measure of centrality in networks, and a proxy for how influential actors are in social networks. In most network models, and many empirical networks, closeness is strongly correlated with degree. However, in social…

Physics and Society · Physics 2009-09-10 Petter Holme , Gourab Ghoshal

We study the problem of agent selection in causal strategic learning under multiple decision makers and address two key challenges that come with it. Firstly, while much of prior work focuses on studying a fixed pool of agents that remains…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Kiet Q. H. Vo , Muneeb Aadil , Siu Lun Chau , Krikamol Muandet

We consider a convex unconstrained optimization problem that arises in a network of agents whose goal is to cooperatively optimize the sum of the individual agent objective functions through local computations and communications. For this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2008-03-11 Angelia Nedić , Alex Olshevsky , Asuman Ozdaglar , John N. Tsitsiklis

A problem of distributed state estimation at multiple agents that are physically connected and have competitive interests is mapped to a distributed source coding problem with additional privacy constraints. The agents interact to estimate…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2012-07-10 Lalitha Sankar , H. Vincent Poor

This paper addresses the problem of collaboratively satisfying long-term spatial constraints in multi-agent systems. Each agent is subject to spatial constraints, expressed as inequalities, which may depend on the positions of other agents…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-23 Farhad Mehdifar , Mani H. Dhullipalla , Charalampos P. Bechlioulis , Dimos V. Dimarogonas

We propose decentralized primal-dual methods for cooperative multi-agent consensus optimization problems over both static and time-varying communication networks, where only local communications are allowed. The objective is to minimize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-23 Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Necdet Serhat Aybat

By the distributed averaging problem is meant the problem of computing the average value of a set of numbers possessed by the agents in a distributed network using only communication between neighboring agents. Gossiping is a well-known…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-12-28 Ji Liu , Shaoshuai Mou , A. Stephen Morse , Brian D. O. Anderson , Changbin Yu

We study the assignment problem of objects to agents with heterogeneous preferences under distributional constraints. Each agent is associated with a publicly known type and has a private ordinal ranking over objects. We are interested in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-05-02 Itai Ashlagi , Amin Saberi , Ali Shameli

We consider the classic principal-agent model of contract theory, in which a principal designs an outcome-dependent compensation scheme to incentivize an agent to take a costly and unobservable action. When all of the model…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-11 Paul Dütting , Tim Roughgarden , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We study the problem of assigning objects to agents in the presence of arbitrary linear constraints when agents are allowed to be indifferent between objects. Our main contribution is the generalization of the (Extended) Probabilistic…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-11-03 Priyanka Shende

This paper aims to address distributed optimization problems over directed and time-varying networks, where the global objective function consists of a sum of locally accessible convex objective functions subject to a feasible set…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-14 Xiuxian Li , Gang Feng , Lihua Xie

We study the mechanism design problem of selling a public good to a group of agents by a principal in the correlated private value environment. We assume the principal only knows the expectations of the agents' values, but does not know the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-01-06 Wanchang Zhang

Given an increasing prevalence of intelligent systems capable of autonomous actions or augmenting human activities, it is important to consider scenarios in which the human, autonomous system, or both can exhibit failures as a result of one…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-03-27 Andrew Fuchs , Andrea Passarella , Marco Conti

Traditional approaches to the design of multi-agent navigation algorithms consider the environment as a fixed constraint, despite the influence of spatial constraints on agents' performance. Yet hand-designing conducive environment layouts…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-05-22 Zhan Gao , Amanda Prorok

Complex scheduling problems require a large amount computation power and innovative solution methods. The objective of this paper is the conception and implementation of a multi-agent system that is applicable in various problem domains.…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-04-21 Peter Hillmann , Tobias Uhlig , Gabi Dreo Rodosek , Oliver Rose

Persuasion studies how an informed principal may influence the behavior of agents by the strategic provision of payoff-relevant information. We focus on the fundamental multi-receiver model by Arieli and Babichenko (2019), in which there…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-04-01 Matteo Castiglioni , Andrea Celli , Nicola Gatti