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Related papers: Contracts for acquiring information

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I study a principal-agent model in which a principal hires an agent to collect information about an unknown continuous state. The agent acquires a signal whose distribution is centered around the state, controlling the signal's precision at…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-05 Fan Wu

I study whether and which expert incentives can be provided at what cost when the states of the world become non-contractible, but there is some noisy observation about the states that can be contracted upon. A principal hires an agent to…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-12 Zizhe Xia

A well-intentioned principal provides information to a rationally inattentive agent without internalizing the agent's cost of processing information. Whatever information the principal makes available, the agent may choose to ignore some.…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-03-04 Elliot Lipnowski , Laurent Mathevet , Dong Wei

A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. Initially, the agent does not observe the state, but he can acquire information about it at a cost. We characterize the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-11-21 Ian Ball , Xin Gao

We consider a dynamic moral hazard problem between a principal and an agent, where the sole instrument the principal has to incentivize the agent is the disclosure of information. The principal aims at maximizing the (discounted) number of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-03-09 Wei Zhao , Claudio Mezzetti , Ludovic Renou , Tristan Tomala

Agents that learn to select optimal actions represent a prominent focus of the sequential decision-making literature. In the face of a complex environment or constraints on time and resources, however, aiming to synthesize such an optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-23 Dilip Arumugam , Benjamin Van Roy

We study the consequences of information asymmetries and misaligned incentives in settings with multiple independent agents. We model an interaction between a Sender, who holds vital private information but cannot act, and a Receiver, who…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Nanda Kishore Sreenivas , Kate Larson

A principal hires an agent to acquire soft information about an unknown state. Even though neither how the agent learns nor what the agent discovers are contractible, we show the principal is unconstrained as to what information the agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-07-31 Mark Whitmeyer , Kun Zhang

We develop a novel framework for costly information acquisition in which a decision-maker learns about an unobserved state by choosing a signal distribution, with the cost of information determined by the distribution of noise in the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-03-27 Peter Achim , Kemal Ozbek

In this paper, we analyze the fundamental trade-off between information transfer and power gain by means of an information-theoretic framework in communications circuits. This analysis is of interest as many of today's applications require…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2014-04-22 Fabian Steiner , Amine Mezghani , Josef A. Nossek

We study optimal risk sharing among $n$ agents endowed with distortion risk measures. Our model includes market frictions that can either represent linear transaction costs or risk premia charged by a clearing house for the agents. Risk…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2012-05-07 M. Ludkovski , V. R. Young

Recent advances in machine learning-aided lossy compression are incorporating perceptual fidelity into the rate-distortion theory. In this paper, we study the rate-distortion-perception trade-off when the perceptual quality is measured by…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Xueyan Niu , Deniz Gündüz , Bo Bai , Wei Han

All sequential decision-making agents explore so as to acquire knowledge about a particular target. It is often the responsibility of the agent designer to construct this target which, in rich and complex environments, constitutes a onerous…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-28 Dilip Arumugam , Benjamin Van Roy

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-07-25 Majid Mahzoon , Ali Shourideh , Ariel Zetlin-Jones

A decision maker is choosing between an active action (e.g., purchase a house, invest certain stock) and a passive action. The payoff of the active action depends on the buyer's private type and also an unknown state of nature. An…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-10-29 Shuze Liu , Weiran Shen , Haifeng Xu

I study dynamic contracting where Sender privately observes a Markovian state and seeks to motivate Receiver, who acts. Sender provides incentives in two ways: payments, which alter payoffs ex-post, and (Bayesian) persuasion, which shapes…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-22 Daniel Luo

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 consider a model of a data broker selling information to a single agent to maximize his revenue. The agent has a private valuation of the additional information, and upon receiving the signal from the data broker, the agent can conduct…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-08-08 Yingkai Li

A principal who values an object allocates it to one or more agents. Agents learn private information (signals) from an information designer about the allocation payoff to the principal. Monetary transfer is not available but the principal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-10-31 Yi-Chun Chen , Gaoji Hu , Xiangqian Yang

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Federico Cacciamani , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti
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