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Related papers: The Complexity of Contracts

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Generalized from the concept of consensus, this paper considers a group of edge agreements, i.e. constraints defined for neighboring agents, in which each pair of neighboring agents is required to satisfy one edge agreement constraint. Edge…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-04 Zehui Lu , Shaoshuai Mou

Dual methods are useful for distributed optimization because they allow agent-level subproblems to be solved in parallel. However, achieving primal feasibility with dual methods is a challenge; it can take many iterations to find prices…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Tetiana Parshakova , Yicheng Bai , Garrett van Ryzin , Stephen Boyd

We study the problem of finding a small subset of items that is \emph{agreeable} to all agents, meaning that all agents value the subset at least as much as its complement. Previous work has shown worst-case bounds, over all instances with…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-02-06 Pasin Manurangsi , Warut Suksompong

Consider a principal who wants to search through a space of stochastic solutions for one maximizing their utility. If the principal cannot conduct this search on their own, they may instead delegate this problem to an agent with distinct…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-11-04 Curtis Bechtel , Shaddin Dughmi

An unconstrained nonlinear binary optimization problem of selecting a maximum expected value subset of items is considered. Each item is associated with a profit and probability. Each of the items succeeds or fails independently with the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2017-06-23 Noam Goldberg , Gabor Rudolf

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-19 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Ibrahim Ekren , Liwei Huang

We suggest that the analysis of incomplete contracting developed by law and economics researchers can provide a useful framework for understanding the AI alignment problem and help to generate a systematic approach to finding solutions. We…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-04-13 Dylan Hadfield-Menell , Gillian Hadfield

Incentives are more likely to elicit desired outcomes when they are designed based on accurate models of agents' strategic behavior. A growing literature, however, suggests that people do not quite behave like standard economic agents in a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-06-09 Arpita Ghosh , Robert Kleinberg

Inspired by the concepts of deep learning in artificial intelligence and fairness in behavioural economics, we introduce deep teams in this paper. In such systems, agents are partitioned into a few sub-populations so that the dynamics and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-03 Jalal Arabneydi , Amir G. Aghdam

We present a proximal policy optimization (PPO) agent trained through curriculum learning (CL) principles and meticulous reward engineering to optimize a real-world high-throughput waste sorting facility. Our work addresses the challenge of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-24 Abhijeet Pendyala , Asma Atamna , Tobias Glasmachers

Recent technology advances have enabled firms to flexibly process and analyze sophisticated employee performance data at a reduced and yet significant cost. We develop a theory of optimal incentive contracting where the monitoring…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2019-11-22 Anqi Li , Ming Yang

When machine learning is outsourced to a rational agent, conflicts of interest might arise and severely impact predictive performance. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework for incentive-aware delegation of machine learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-07 Eden Saig , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Nir Rosenfeld

In settings where full incentive-compatibility is not available, such as core-constraint combinatorial auctions and budget-balanced combinatorial exchanges, we may wish to design mechanisms that are as incentive-compatible as possible. This…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-03-24 Benjamin Lubin

This paper focuses on managing the cost of deliberation before action. In many problems, the overall quality of the solution reflects costs incurred and resources consumed in deliberation as well as the cost and benefit of execution, when…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-04-05 David Einav , Michael R. Fehling

We study contract design for welfare maximization in the well known "common agency" model of [Bernheim and Whinston, 1986]. This model combines the challenges of coordinating multiple principals with the fundamental challenge of contract…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-06-01 Tal Alon , Ron Lavi , Elisheva S. Shamash , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We study the communication complexity of dominant strategy implementations of combinatorial auctions. We start with two domains that are generally considered "easy": multi-unit auctions with decreasing marginal values and combinatorial…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-02 Shahar Dobzinski , Shiri Ron , Jan Vondrák

A fundamental assumption in classical mechanism design is that buyers are perfect optimizers. However, in practice, buyers may be limited by their computational capabilities or a lack of information, and may not be able to perfectly…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-03-28 Santiago Balseiro , Omar Besbes , Francisco Castro

Today's multiagent systems have grown too complex to rely on centralized controllers, prompting increasing interest in the design of distributed algorithms. In this respect, game theory has emerged as a valuable tool to complement more…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2020-02-19 Rahul Chandan , Dario Paccagnan , Jason R. Marden

In this paper we investigate the computational complexity of motivating time-inconsistent agents to complete long term projects. We resort to an elegant graph-theoretic model, introduced by Kleinberg and Oren, which consists of a task graph…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2016-01-05 Susanne Albers , Dennis Kraft

The stable marriage and stable roommates problems have been extensively studied due to their high applicability in various real-world scenarios. However, it might happen that no stable solution exists, or stable solutions do not meet…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-04-29 Kristóf Bérczi , Gergely Csáji , Tamás Király