Related papers: Simple versus Optimal Contracts
We consider a general formulation of the Principal-Agent problem with a lump-sum payment on a finite horizon, providing a systematic method for solving such problems. Our approach is the following: we first find the contract that is optimal…
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…
A principal who values an object allocates it to one or more agents. Agents learn private information (signals) from an information designer about the allocation payoff to the principal. Monetary transfer is not available but the principal…
We consider the design of experiments to evaluate treatments that are administered by self-interested agents, each seeking to achieve the highest evaluation and win the experiment. For example, in an advertising experiment, a company wishes…
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.…
We study the optimal contract problem in the \emph{combinatorial actions} framework of D\"utting et al.~[FOCS'21], where a principal delegates a project to an agent who chooses a subset of hidden, costly actions, and the resulting reward is…
We characterize the optimal reward functions (scoring rules) that incentivize an agent to acquire information and report it truthfully to the principal. The optimal scoring rules let the agent make a simple binary bet in single-dimensional…
We study the optimal design of electricity contracts among a population of consumers with different needs. This question is tackled within the framework of Principal-Agent problems in presence of adverse selection. The particular features…
We propose a new principal-agent framework where a principal communicates a roadmap -- a set of plausible outcome models and a prior belief over them -- to guide an agent who is learning the value of innovation. The agent trusts the prior…
Motivated by the emergence of decentralized machine learning (ML) ecosystems, we study the delegation of data collection. Taking the field of contract theory as our starting point, we design optimal and near-optimal contracts that deal with…
This paper studies optimal contract design in private market investing, focusing on internal decision making in venture capital and private equity firms. A principal relies on an agent who privately exerts costly due diligence effort and…
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…
What is the purpose of pre-analysis plans, and how should they be designed? We model the interaction between an agent who analyzes data and a principal who makes a decision based on agent reports. The agent could be the manufacturer of a…
We study a multi-agent contracting problem where agents exert costly effort to achieve individually observable binary outcomes. While the principal can theoretically extract the full social welfare using a discriminatory contract that…
When multiple informative equilibria are possible in a general cheap talk game, how much information can a principal guarantee herself? To answer this question, I define the notion of worst-case implementation-implementation via the worst…
We analyze a model of selling a single object to a principal-agent pair who want to acquire the object for a firm. The principal and the agent have different assessments of the object's value to the firm. The agent is budget-constrained…
Following the recent literature on make take fees policies, we consider an exchange wishing to set a suitable contract with several market makers in order to improve trading quality on its platform. To do so, we use a principal-agent…
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…
This paper studies continuous-time optimal contracting in a hierarchy problem which generalises the model of Sung (2015). The hierarchy is modeled by a series of interlinked principal-agent problems, leading to a sequence of Stackelberg…
This brief note considers the problem of learning with dynamic-optimizing principal-agent setting, in which the agents are allowed to have global perspectives about the learning process, i.e., the ability to view things according to their…