Related papers: Continuous-time incentives in hierarchies
What type of delegation contract should be offered when facing a risk of the magnitude of the pandemic we are currently experiencing and how does the likelihood of an exogenous early termination of the relationship modify the terms of a…
Can a principal still offer optimal dynamic contracts that are linear in end-of-period outcomes when the agent controls a process that exhibits memory? We provide a positive answer by considering a general Gaussian setting where the output…
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…
We study the incentivized information acquisition problem, where a principal hires an agent to gather information on her behalf. Such a problem is modeled as a Stackelberg game between the principal and the agent, where the principal…
We analyze a two-period principal-agent model in which the principal faces a budget constraint, and the agent's private costs of performing tasks across the two periods may be correlated. We examine the optimal design of the reward scheme…
A principal provides nondiscriminatory incentives for independent and identical agents. The principal cannot observe the agents' actions, nor does she know the entire set of actions available to them. It is shown, very generally, that any…
Today's control systems are often characterized by modularity and safety requirements to handle complexity, resulting in hierarchical control structures. Although hierarchical model predictive control offers favorable properties, achieving…
We initiate the study of computing (near-)optimal contracts in succinctly representable principal-agent settings. Here optimality means maximizing the principal's expected payoff over all incentive-compatible contracts---known in economics…
In this paper, we consider a chain of distributed systems governed by a degenerate parabolic equation, which satisfies a weak H\"{o}rmander type condition, with a control distributed over an open subdomain. In particular, we consider two…
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…
We consider a singular stochastic control problem, which is called the Monotone Follower Stochastic Control Problem and give sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a local-time type optimal control. To establish this…
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…
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…
In multi-agent problems requiring a high degree of cooperation, success often depends on the ability of the agents to adapt to each other's behavior. A natural solution concept in such settings is the Stackelberg equilibrium, in which the…
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…
We study principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (a.k.a. contract) so as to induce an agent to take a costly, unobservable action. We relax the assumption that the principal perfectly…
We study a moral hazard problem with adverse selection: a risk-neutral agent can directly control the output distribution and possess private information about the production environment. The principal designs a menu of contracts satisfying…
We consider the robust contract design problem when the principal only has limited information about the actions the agent can take. The principal evaluates a contract according to its worst-case performance caused by the uncertain action…
Building on insights of Jovanovic (1982) and subsequent authors, we develop a comprehensive theory of optimal timing of decisions based around continuation value functions and operators that act on them. Optimality results are provided…
We consider a stochastic control problem where the set of strict (classical) controls is not necessarily convex and the the variable control has two components, the first being absolutely continuous and the second singular. The system is…