Related papers: The Complexity of Contracts
A principal contracts with an agent who sequentially searches over projects to generate a prize. The principal initially knows only one of the agent's available projects and evaluates a contract by its worst-case performance. We…
We study principal-agent problems where a farsighted agent takes costly actions in an MDP. The core challenge in these settings is that agent's actions are hidden to the principal, who can only observe their outcomes, namely state…
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…
In the classical principal-agent hidden-action contract model, a principal delegates the execution of a costly task to an agent. In order to complete the task, the agent chooses an action from a set of actions, where each potential action…
We show that, in many settings, the worst-case performance of a distributed optimization algorithm is independent of the number of agents in the system, and can thus be computed in the fundamental case with just two agents. This result…
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…
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…
We initiate the study of online contracts, which integrate the game-theoretic considerations of economic contract theory, with the algorithmic and informational challenges of online algorithm design. Our starting point is the classic online…
We analyze conditional optimization problems arising in discrete time Principal-Agent problems of delegated portfolio optimization with linear contracts. Applying tools from Conditional Analysis we show that some results known in the…
We study a natural application of contract design in the context of sequential exploration problems. In our principal-agent setting, a search task is delegated to an agent. The agent performs a sequential exploration of $n$ boxes, suffers…
A contract is an economic tool used by a principal to incentivize one or more agents to exert effort on her behalf, by defining payments based on observable performance measures. A key challenge addressed by contracts -- known in economics…
Motivated by the question of how a principal can maximize its utility in repeated interactions with a learning agent, we study repeated games between an principal and an agent employing a mean-based learning algorithm. Prior work has shown…
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…
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,…
We propose a Fully Polynomial-Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS) for stochastic dynamic programs with multidimensional action, scalar state, convex costs and linear state transition function. The action spaces are polyhedral and described by…
In this paper, we settle the problem of learning optimal linear contracts from data in the offline setting, where agent types are drawn from an unknown distribution and the principal's goal is to design a contract that maximizes her…
Stable matching is a fundamental area with many practical applications, such as centralised clearinghouses for school choice or job markets. Recent work has introduced the paradigm of near-feasibility in capacitated matching settings, where…
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…
We study the classic principal-agent model when the signal observed by the principal is chosen by the agent. We fully characterize the optimal information structure from an agent's perspective in a general moral hazard setting with limited…
In a framework close to the one developed by Holmstr\"om and Milgrom [44], we study the optimal contracting scheme between a Principal and several Agents. Each hired Agent is in charge of one project, and can make efforts towards managing…