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We introduce and study a computational version of the principal-agent problem -- a classic problem in Economics that arises when a principal desires to contract an agent to carry out some task, but has incomplete information about the agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-18 David Hyland , Julian Gutierrez , Michael Wooldridge

We study a general contracting problem between the principal and a finite set of competitive agents, who perform equivalent changes of measure by controlling the drift of the output process and the compensator of its associated jump…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-08-25 Nicolás Hernández Santibáñez

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

This paper investigates the moral hazard problem in finite horizon with both continuous and lump-sum payments, involving a time-inconsistent sophisticated agent and a standard utility maximiser principal. Building upon the so-called dynamic…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-03-06 Camilo Hernández , Dylan Possamaï

We consider numerical resolution of principal-agent (PA) problems in continuous time. We formulate a generic PA model with continuous and lump payments and a multi-dimensional strategy of the agent. To tackle the resulting…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Michael Ludkovski , Changgen Xie , Zimu Zhu

We introduce a novel model of contracts with combinatorial actions that accounts for sequential and adaptive agent behavior. As in the standard model, a principal delegates the execution of a costly project to an agent. There are $n$…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Maya Schlesinger

In this paper, we consider a problem of contract theory in which several Principals hire a common Agent and we study the model in the continuous time setting. We show that optimal contracts should satisfy some equilibrium conditions and we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-01-15 Thibaut Mastrolia , Zhenjie Ren

Principal-agent problems model scenarios where a principal incentivizes an agent to take costly, unobservable actions through the provision of payments. Such problems are ubiquitous in several real-world applications, ranging from…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-27 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Jiarui Gan , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

In this paper we provide an alternative framework to tackle the first-best Principal-Agent problem under CARA utilities. This framework leads to both a proof of existence and uniqueness of the solution to the Risk-Sharing problem under very…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2019-12-18 Jessica Martin , Anthony Réveillac

In the classical principal-agent problem, a principal must design a contract to incentivize an agent to perform an action on behalf of the principal. We study the classical principal-agent problem in a setting where the agent can be of one…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-10-15 Guru Guruganesh , Jon Schneider , Joshua Wang

We consider the problem of estimating the possibly non-convex cost of an agent by observing its interactions with a nonlinear, non-stationary and stochastic environment. For this inverse problem, we give a result that allows to estimate the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-24 Émiland Garrabé , Hozefa Jesawada , Carmen Del Vecchio , Giovanni Russo

In this paper we investigate a Principal-Agent problem with moral hazard under Knightian uncertainty. We extend the seminal framework of Holmstr\"om and Milgrom by combining a Stackelberg equilibrium with a worst-case approach. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-03-28 Nicolás Hernández Santibánez , Thibaut Mastrolia

We consider infinite horizon dynamic programming problems, where the control at each stage consists of several distinct decisions, each one made by one of several agents. In an earlier work we introduced a policy iteration algorithm, where…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-05 Dimitri Bertsekas

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 consider a moral hazard problem with multiple principals in a continuous-time model. The agent can only work exclusively for one principal at a given time, so faces an optimal switching problem. Using a randomized formulation, we manage…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-09-14 Kaitong Hu , Zhenjie Ren , Junjian Yang

We study a bilevel \emph{max-max} optimization framework for principal-agent contract design, in which a principal chooses incentives to maximize utility while anticipating the agent's best response. This problem, central to moral hazard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Tomer Galanti , Aarya Bookseller , Korok Ray

We introduce a class of robust control problems formulated in min-max form, in which the principal agent is viewed as a central planner facing Nature. The agent's cost is a nonlinear function of all its possible realizations, encompassing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-24 François Delarue , Pierre Lavigne

We propose to study electricity capacity remuneration mechanism design through a Principal-Agent approach. The Principal represents the aggregation of electricity consumers (or a representative entity), subject to the physical risk of…

General Economics · Economics 2020-09-02 Clémence Alasseur , Heythem Farhat , Marcelo Saguan

We study the combinatorial contract design problem, introduced and studied by Dutting et. al. (2021, 2022), in both the single and multi-agent settings. Prior work has examined the problem when the principal's utility function is submodular…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-08-16 Ramiro Deo-Campo Vuong , Shaddin Dughmi , Neel Patel , Aditya Prasad

This work studies a class of non-smooth decentralized multi-agent optimization problems where the agents aim at minimizing a sum of local strongly-convex smooth components plus a common non-smooth term. We propose a general primal-dual…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-13 Sulaiman A. Alghunaim , Ernest K. Ryu , Kun Yuan , Ali H. Sayed