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Related papers: Contracts under Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection

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In this paper, we extend the Holmstro\"om and Milgrom problem [47] by adding uncertainty about the volatility of the output for both the Agent and the Principal. We study more precisely the impact of the "Nature" playing against the Agent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-10-25 Thibaut Mastrolia , Dylan Possamaï

We examine the trade-off between the provision of incentives to exert costly effort (ex-ante moral hazard) and the incentives needed to prevent the agent from manipulating the profit observed by the principal (ex-post moral hazard).…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-12-14 Jean-Gabriel Lauzier

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 principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme -- called contract -- in order to induce an agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. We consider a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

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

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 study the fundamental problem of designing contracts in principal-agent problems under uncertainty. Previous works mostly addressed Bayesian settings in which principal's uncertainty is modeled as a probability distribution over agent's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Paul Duetting , Michal Feldman , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-06-18 Bo Peng , Zhihao Gavin Tang

This paper considers the hidden-action model of the principal-agent problem, in which a principal incentivizes an agent to work on a project using a contract. We investigate whether contracts with bounded payments are learnable and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Yurong Chen , Zhaohua Chen , Xiaotie Deng , Zhiyi Huang

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

The problem of computing near-optimal contracts in combinatorial settings has recently attracted significant interest in the computer science community. Previous work has provided a rich body of structural and algorithmic insights into this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-26 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

This paper considers dynamic moral hazard settings, in which the consequences of the agent's actions are not precisely understood. In a new continuous-time moral hazard model with drift ambiguity, the agent's unobservable action translates…

General Economics · Economics 2021-10-29 Martin Dumav

We study the power of menus of contracts in principal-agent problems with adverse selection (agents can be one of several types) and moral hazard (we cannot observe agent actions directly). For principal-agent problems with $T$ types and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-06-23 Guru Guruganesh , Jon Schneider , Joshua Wang , Junyao Zhao

We consider a hidden-action principal-agent model, in which actions require different amounts of effort, and the agent privately knows his ability that determines his cost of effort. We show that linear contracts admit approximation…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Tal Alon , Paul Dütting , Yingkai Li , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We study a general class of Principal-Agent problems in continuous time under hidden action. By formulating the model as a coupled stochastic optimal control problem we are able to find a set of necessary conditions characterizing optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-11-27 Boualem Djehiche , Peter Helgesson

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

We study optimal contract design for large populations of heterogeneous agents whose actions generate network spillovers represented by an interaction function. In a linear-quadratic framework, we solve the finite-agent problem and its…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-19 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Erhan Bayraktar , Ibrahim Ekren

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-18 Matteo Bollini , Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

Machine learning has become increasingly popular in informing data-driven policy-making. Policies influence behavior in individuals or populations, and ideally, through observational signals, policy-makers learn which policies are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Shiliang Zuo