Related papers: Combinatorial Contracts
Motivated by the recent popularity of machine learning training services, we introduce a contract design problem in which a provider sells a service that results in an outcome of uncertain quality for the buyer. The seller has a set of…
We propose a new principal-agent framework where a principal communicates a roadmap -- a set of plausible outcome models and a prior belief over them -- to guide an agent who is learning the value of innovation. The agent trusts the prior…
In this paper we present a variational calculus approach to Principal-Agent problem with a lump-sum payment on finite horizon in degenerate stochastic systems, such as filtered partially observed linear systems. Our work extends the…
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…
We study the problem of learning a good set of policies, so that when combined together, they can solve a wide variety of unseen reinforcement learning tasks with no or very little new data. Specifically, we consider the framework of…
We study risk-free bidding strategies in combinatorial auctions with incomplete information. Specifically, what is the maximum profit that a complement-free (subadditive) bidder can guarantee in a multi-item combinatorial auction? Suppose…
Consider a dynamic task allocation problem, where tasks are unknowingly distributed over an environment. This paper considers each task comprised of two sequential subtasks: detection and completion, where each subtask can only be carried…
We consider a continuous time Principal-Agent model on a finite time horizon, where we look for the existence of an optimal contract both parties agreed on. Contrary to the main stream, where the principal is modelled as risk-neutral, we…
The existence of incentive-compatible computationally-efficient protocols for combinatorial auctions with decent approximation ratios is the paradigmatic problem in computational mechanism design. It is believed that in many cases good…
Principal agent games are a growing area of research which focuses on the optimal behaviour of a principal and an agent, with the former contracting work from the latter, in return for providing a monetary award. While this field…
Contract scheduling is a widely studied framework for designing real-time systems with interruptible capabilities. Previous work has showed that a prediction on the interruption time can help improve the performance of contract-based…
We present a parametric calculus for contract-based computing in distributed systems. By abstracting from the actual contract language, our calculus generalises both the contracts-as-processes and contracts-as-formulae paradigms. The…
We study hidden-action principal-agent problems with multiple agents. Unlike previous work, we consider a general setting in which each agent has an arbitrary number of actions, and the joint action induces outcomes according to an…
This paper considers a network of agents, where each agent is assumed to take actions optimally with respect to a predefined payoff function involving the latest actions of the agent's neighbors. Neighborhood relationships stem from payoff…
Revealed preference techniques are used to test whether a data set is compatible with rational behaviour. They are also incorporated as constraints in mechanism design to encourage truthful behaviour in applications such as combinatorial…
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…
We consider an online multi-weighted generalization of several classic online optimization problems, called the online combinatorial assignment problem. We are given an independence system over a ground set of elements and agents that…
In mechanism design it is typical to impose incentive compatibility and then derive an optimal mechanism subject to this constraint. By replacing the incentive compatibility requirement with the goal of minimizing expected ex post regret,…
We study the hidden-action principal-agent problem in an online setting. In each round, the principal posts a contract that specifies the payment to the agent based on each outcome. The agent then makes a strategic choice of action that…
We consider mechanisms for truthfully eliciting probabilistic predictions from a group of experts. The standard approach -- using a proper scoring rule to separately reward each expert -- is not robust to collusion: experts may collude to…