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This paper studies a dynamic screening model in which a principal hires an agent with limited liability. The agent's private cost of working is an i.i.d. draw from a continuous distribution. His working status is publicly observable. The…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-26 Yijun Liu

In the presence of ambiguity on the driving force of market randomness, we consider the dynamic portfolio choice without any predetermined investment horizon. The investment criteria is formulated as a robust forward performance process,…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2019-04-23 Qian Lin , Xianming Sun , Chao Zhou

Many incentive design problems must contend with information asymmetries due to non-observation of efficiency (adverse selection) or non-observation of effort (moral hazard). And although a growing body of literature considers incentive…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-04 Jaewon Jeong , Pan-Yang Su , S. Shankar Sastry , Anil Aswani

We study the problem of demand response contracts in electricity markets by quantifying the impact of considering a mean-field of consumers, whose consumption is impacted by a common noise. We formulate the problem as a Principal-Agent…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-03-25 Romuald Elie , Emma Hubert , Thibaut Mastrolia , Dylan Possamaï

Assessing the systemic effects of uncertainty that arises from agents' partial observation of the true states of the world is critical for understanding a wide range of scenarios. Yet, previous modeling work on agent learning and…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2022-04-15 Wolfram Barfuss , Richard P. Mann

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

We propose and analyze a continuous-time robust reinforcement learning framework for optimal stopping under ambiguity. In this framework, an agent chooses a robust exploratory stopping time motivated by two objectives: robust…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-17 Junyan Ye , Hoi Ying Wong , Kyunghyun Park

This paper focuses on a dynamic multi-asset mean-variance portfolio selection problem under model uncertainty. We develop a continuous time framework for taking into account ambiguity aversion about both expected return rates and…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2021-12-02 Huyen Pham , Xiaoli Wei , Chao Zhou

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 focus on human-robot collaborative transport, in which a robot and a user collaboratively move an object to a goal pose. In the absence of explicit communication, this problem is challenging because it demands tight implicit coordination…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-02-06 Elvin Yang , Christoforos Mavrogiannis

This paper studies sequential information acquisition by an ambiguity-averse decision maker (DM), who decides how long to collect information before taking an irreversible action. The agent optimizes against the worst-case belief and…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-10-06 Sarah Auster , Yeon-Koo Che , Konrad Mierendorff

We present a continuous-time contract whereby a top-level player can incentivize a hierarchy of players below him to act in his best interest despite only observing the output of his direct subordinate. This paper extends Sannikov's…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-11-25 Christopher W. Miller , Insoon Yang

This work suggests modifications to a previously introduced class of heterogeneous agent models that allow for the inclusion of different types of agent motivations and behaviours in a unified way. The agents operate within a highly…

Trading and Market Microstructure · Quantitative Finance 2009-11-13 H. Lamba , T. Seaman

The dynamics of an agreement protocol interacting with a disagreement process over a common random network is considered. The model can represent the spreading of true and false information over a communication network, the propagation of…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2012-08-17 Guodong Shi , Mikael Johansson , Karl Henrik Johansson

We consider the impact of ambiguity on the optimal timing of a class of two-dimensional integral option contracts when the exercise payoff is a positively homogeneous measurable function. Hence, the considered class of exercise payoffs…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2019-06-19 Luis H. R. Alvarez E. , Sören Christensen

I model a rational agent who experiences endogenous deadline pressure in the face of a fixed future deadline. The agent holds a resource stock, and opportunities to spend resources arise randomly according to a Poisson process. When the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-10 Conrad Kosowsky

In principal-agent models, a principal offers a contract to an agent to perform a certain task. The agent exerts a level of effort that maximizes her utility. The principal is oblivious to the agent's chosen level of effort, and conditions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Alon Cohen , Moran Koren , Argyrios Deligkas

The hidden-action model captures a fundamental problem of principal-agent theory and provides an optimal sharing rule when only the outcome but not the effort can be observed. However, the hidden-action model builds on various explicit and…

General Economics · Economics 2020-04-15 Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

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

A principal contracts with an agent who sequentially searches over projects to generate a prize. The principal initially knows only one of the agent's available projects and evaluates a contract by its worst-case performance. We…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-17 Théo Durandard , Udayan Vaidya , Boli Xu