Related papers: Contracts under Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection
We explore the deliberate infusion of ambiguity into the design of contracts. We show that when the agent is ambiguity-averse and hence chooses an action that maximizes their minimum utility, the principal can strictly gain from using an…
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…
Principal-agent problems arise when one party acts on behalf of another, leading to conflicts of interest. The economic literature has extensively studied principal-agent problems, and recent work has extended this to more complex scenarios…
In this work, we study sequential contracts under matroid constraints. In the sequential setting, an agent can take actions one by one. After each action, the agent observes the stochastic value of the action and then decides which action…
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 linear contracts for combinatorial problems in multi-agent settings. In this problem, a principal designs a linear contract with several agents, each of whom can decide to take a costly action or not. The principal observes only…
We consider a principal-agent problem where the agent may privately choose to acquire relevant information prior to taking a hidden action. This model generalizes two special cases: a classic moral hazard setting, and a more recently…
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a contract between a public entity and a consortium, in which the public outsources the construction and the maintenance of an equipment (hospital, university, prison...). One drawback of this contract is…
We study a natural combinatorial single-principal multi-agent contract design problem, in which a principal motivates a team of agents to exert effort toward a given task. At the heart of our model is a reward function, which maps the agent…
We consider moral hazard problems where a principal has access to rich monitoring data about an agent's action. Rather than focusing on optimal contracts (which are known to in general be complicated), we characterize the optimal rate at…
We investigate the mechanism design problem faced by a principal who hires \emph{multiple} agents to gather and report costly information. Then, the principal exploits the information to make an informed decision. We model this problem as a…
This paper studies contracting in the presence of externalities with a non-contractible outsider. Multiple equilibria arise from strategic symmetry between the insider agent and the outsider. To address strategic uncertainty, the principal…
In the combinatorial-action contract model (D\"utting et al., FOCS'21) a principal delegates the execution of a complex project to an agent, who can choose any subset from a given set of actions. Each set of actions incurs a cost to the…
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…
In the combinatorial action model of contract design, a principal delegates a complex project to an agent, incentivizing a subset of actions from a ground set of $n$ actions, via a linear contract. Computing the optimal contract is a…
I revisit the standard moral-hazard model, in which an agent's preference over contracts is rooted in costly effort choice. I characterise the behavioural content of the model in terms of empirically testable axioms, and show that the…
In this paper we study a principal-agent problem in continuous time with multiple lump-sum payments (contracts) paid at different deterministic times. We reduce the non-zero sum Stackelberg game between the principal and agent to a standard…
In this paper, we address three Principal--Agent problems in a moral hazard context and show that they are connected. We start by studying the problem of Principal with multiple Agents in cooperation. The term cooperation is manifested here…
This article studies the problem of evaluating the information that a Principal lacks when establishing an incentive contract with an Agent whose effort is not observable. The Principal ("she") pays a continuous rent to the Agent ("he"),…