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Related papers: Combinatorial Contracts

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We study mechanism design for combinatorial cost sharing. Imagine that multiple items or services are available to be shared among a set of interested agents. The outcome of a mechanism in this setting consists of an assignment, determining…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-10-16 Georgios Birmpas , Evangelos Markakis , Guido Schäfer

We study a generic principal-agent problem in continuous time on a finite time horizon. We introduce a framework in which the agent is allowed to employ measure-valued controls and characterise the continuation utility as a solution to a…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-12-01 Daniel Kršek , Dylan Possamaï

We consider an extension of the rollout algorithm that applies to constrained deterministic dynamic programming, including challenging combinatorial optimization problems. The algorithm relies on a suboptimal policy, called base heuristic.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-04-28 Dimitri Bertsekas

In this paper, we consider a general distributed system with multiple agents who select and then implement actions in the system. The system has an operator with a centralized objective. The agents, on the other hand, are selfinterested and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-01-15 Donya Ghavidel , Pratyush Chakraborty , Enrique Baeyens , Vijay Gupta , Pramod P. Khargonekar

Contract theories have been proposed to formally support distributed and decentralized system design while ensuring safe system integration. In this paper we propose hypercontracts, a generic model with a richer structure for its underlying…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Inigo Incer , Albert Benveniste , Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli , Sanjit A. Seshia

When organizations delegate text generation tasks to AI providers via pay-for-performance contracts, expected payments rise when evaluation is noisy. As evaluation methods become more elaborate, the economic benefits of decreased noise are…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-19 Eden Saig , Tamar Garbuz , Ariel D. Procaccia , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Jamie Tucker-Foltz

Firms have access to abundant data on market participants. They use these data to target contracts to agents with specific characteristics, and describe these contracts in opaque terms. In response to such practices, recent proposed…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-02-01 Andreas Haupt , Zoe Hitzig

We introduce a two-agent problem which is inspired by price asymmetry arising from funding difference. When two parties have different funding rates, the two parties deduce different fair prices for derivative contracts even under the same…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2020-01-01 Junbeom Lee , Stephan Sturm , Chao Zhou

A decisionmaker faces $n$ alternatives, each of which represents a potential reward. After investing costly resources into investigating the alternatives, the decisionmaker may select one, or more generally a feasible subset, and obtain the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Robin Bowers , Elias Lindgren , Bo Waggoner

Although both data availability and the demand for accurate forecasts are increasing, collaboration between stakeholders is often constrained by data ownership and competitive interests. In contrast to recent proposals within cooperative…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Michael Vitali , Pierre Pinson

Combinatorial optimization can be described as the problem of finding a feasible subset that maximizes a objective function. The paper discusses combinatorial optimization problems, where for each dimension the set of feasible subsets is…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2024-11-27 Nimrod Megiddo

In multi-agent reinforcement learning systems, the actions of one agent can have a negative impact on the rewards of other agents. One way to combat this problem is to let agents trade their rewards amongst each other. Motivated by this,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-07-25 Michael Kölle , Lennart Rietdorf , Kyrill Schmid

In delegation problems, a principal does not have the resources necessary to complete a particular task, so they delegate the task to an untrusted agent whose interests may differ from their own. Given any family of such problems and space…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-02-22 Curtis Bechtel , Shaddin Dughmi , Neel Patel

We consider the problem of budget feasible mechanism design proposed by Singer (2010), but in a Bayesian setting. A principal has a public value for hiring a subset of the agents and a budget, while the agents have private costs for being…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-10-22 Eric Balkanski , Jason D. Hartline

The design of revenue-maximizing combinatorial auctions, i.e. multi-item auctions over bundles of goods, is one of the most fundamental problems in computational economics, unsolved even for two bidders and two items for sale. In the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-06-15 Maria-Florina Balcan , Tuomas Sandholm , Ellen Vitercik

We consider a general framework of optimal mechanism design under adverse selection and ambiguity about the type distribution of agents. We prove the existence of optimal mechanisms under minimal assumptions on the contract space and prove…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-03-18 Julio Backhoff-Veraguas , Patrick Beissner , Ulrich Horst

Models of economic decision makers often include idealized assumptions, such as rationality, perfect foresight, and access to all relevant pieces of information. These assumptions often assure the models' internal validity, but, at the same…

General Economics · Economics 2021-07-09 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

In Combinatorial Public Projects, there is a set of projects that may be undertaken, and a set of self-interested players with a stake in the set of projects chosen. A public planner must choose a subset of these projects, subject to a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2011-04-19 Shaddin Dughmi

In this paper, we initiate the computational problem of jointly designing information and contracts. We consider three possible classes of contracts with decreasing flexibility and increasing simplicity: ambiguous contracts, menus of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-09 Matteo Castiglioni , Junjie Chen

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