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Related papers: Principal-agent problem with multiple principals

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We consider N-player and mean field games in continuous time over a finite horizon, where the position of each agent belongs to {-1,1}. If there is uniqueness of mean field game solutions, e.g. under monotonicity assumptions, then the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-02-06 Alekos Cecchin , Paolo Dai Pra , Markus Fischer , Guglielmo Pelino

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 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

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 real-life contractual relations differ completely from the clean, static model at the heart of principal-agent theory. Typically, they involve repeated strategic interactions of the principal and agent, taking place under uncertainty…

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

The increasing deployment of AI is shaping the future landscape of the internet, which is set to become an integrated ecosystem of AI agents. Orchestrating the interaction among AI agents necessitates decentralized, self-sustaining…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Dima Ivanov , Paul Dütting , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Tonghan Wang , David C. Parkes

This paper focuses on the role of a government of a large population of interacting agents as a mean field optimal control problem derived from deterministic finite agent dynamics. The control problems are constrained by a PDE of…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2020-11-17 Massimo Fornasier , Stefano Lisini , Carlo Orrieri , Giuseppe Savaré

A principal uses payments conditioned on stochastic outcomes of a team project to elicit costly effort from the team members. We develop a multi-agent generalization of a classic first-order approach to contract optimization by leveraging…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-03-13 Krishna Dasaratha , Benjamin Golub , Anant Shah

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

In this paper we study a generalization of the continuous time Principal-Agent problem allowing for time inconsistent utility functions, for instance of mean-variance type. Using recent results on the Pontryagin maximum principle for FBSDEs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-19 Boualem Djehiche , Peter Helgesson

Modeling the purposeful behavior of imperfect agents from a small number of observations is a challenging task. When restricted to the single-agent decision-theoretic setting, inverse optimal control techniques assume that observed behavior…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Kevin Waugh , Brian D. Ziebart , J. Andrew Bagnell

We study optimal portfolio choice models in markets with partial information about the stock's drift. We solve the single agent problem for general utilities using a new approach that yields regularity of the value function and closed form…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-27 Panagiotis Souganidis , Thaleia Zariphopoulou

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

Multi-agent reinforcement learning methods have shown remarkable potential in solving complex multi-agent problems but mostly lack theoretical guarantees. Recently, mean field control and mean field games have been established as a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-20 Kai Cui , Anam Tahir , Mark Sinzger , Heinz Koeppl

We study a two-period moral hazard problem; there are two agents, with action sets that are unknown to the principal. The principal contracts with each agent sequentially, and seeks to maximize the worst-case discounted sum of payoffs,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-02-15 Chang Liu

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

We introduce a mean field game with rank-based reward: competing agents optimize their effort to achieve a goal, are ranked according to their completion time, and paid a reward based on their relative rank. First, we propose a tractable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-08-07 Marcel Nutz , Yuchong Zhang

The widespread deployment of Machine Learning systems everywhere raises challenges, such as dealing with interactions or competition between multiple learners. In that goal, we study multi-agent sequential decision-making by considering…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Antoine Scheid , Etienne Boursier , Alain Durmus , Eric Moulines , Michael I. Jordan

We consider a principal agent project selection problem with asymmetric information. There are $N$ projects and the principal must select exactly one of them. Each project provides some profit to the principal and some payoff to the agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-04-15 Sumit Goel , Wade Hann-Caruthers