Related papers: Delegated Pandora's box
This paper considers a distributed convex optimization problem over a time-varying multi-agent network, where each agent has its own decision variables that should be set so as to minimize its individual objective subject to local…
Weitzman introduced Pandora's box problem as a mathematical model of sequential search with inspection costs, in which a searcher is allowed to select a prize from one of $n$ alternatives. Several decades later, Doval introduced a close…
We study the problem of distributed task allocation in multi-agent systems. Suppose there is a collection of agents, a collection of tasks, and a demand vector, which specifies the number of agents required to perform each task. The goal of…
Decentralized control of cooperative systems captures the operation of a group of decision makers that share a single global objective. The difficulty in solving optimally such problems arises when the agents lack full observability of the…
In this paper, we develop a class of decentralized algorithms for solving a convex resource allocation problem in a network of $n$ agents, where the agent objectives are decoupled while the resource constraints are coupled. The agents…
We consider a general formulation of the Principal-Agent problem with a lump-sum payment on a finite horizon, providing a systematic method for solving such problems. Our approach is the following: we first find the contract that is optimal…
We study a setting in which a principal selects an agent to execute a collection of tasks according to a specified priority sequence. Agents, however, have their own individual priority sequences according to which they wish to execute the…
Limited memory of decision-makers is often neglected in economic models, although it is reasonable to assume that it significantly influences the models' outcomes. The hidden-action model introduced by Holmstr\"om also includes this…
We investigate the problem of random assignment of indivisible goods, in which each agent has an ordinal preference and a constraint. Our goal is to characterize the conditions under which there always exists a random assignment that…
What type of delegation contract should be offered when facing a risk of the magnitude of the pandemic we are currently experiencing and how does the likelihood of an exogenous early termination of the relationship modify the terms of a…
I study the optimal design of ratings to motivate agent investment in quality when transfers are unavailable. The principal designs a rating scheme that maps the agent's quality to a (possibly stochastic) score. The agent has private…
A simple model for cooperation between "selfish" agents, which play an extended version of the Prisoner's Dilemma(PD) game, in which they use arbitrary payoffs, is presented and studied. A continuous variable, representing the probability…
Budgetary constraints force organizations to pursue only a subset of possible innovation projects. Identifying which subset is most promising is an error-prone exercise, and involving multiple decision makers may be prudent. This raises the…
We consider cooperative multi-agent resource sharing problems over time-varying communication networks, where only local communications are allowed. The objective is to minimize the sum of agent-specific composite convex functions subject…
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…
The most well-known conjecture in the context of matroid secretary problems claims the existence of a constant-factor approximation applicable to any matroid. Whereas this conjecture remains open, modified forms of it were shown to be true,…
Many multi-agent coordination problems can be represented as DCOPs. Motivated by task allocation in disaster response, we extend standard DCOP models to consider uncertain task rewards where the outcome of completing a task depends on its…
Many safety-critical real-world problems, such as autonomous driving and collaborative robots, are of a distributed multi-agent nature. To optimize the performance of these systems while ensuring safety, we can cast them as distributed…
In this paper, the total payoff of each agent is regulated to reduce the heterogeneity of the distribution of the total payoffs. It is found there is an optimal regulation strength where the fraction of cooperation is prominently promoted,…
We consider the problem of decentralized constrained optimization with multiple agents $E_1,\ldots,E_N$ who jointly wish to learn the optimal solution set while keeping their feasible sets $\mathcal{P}_1,\ldots,\mathcal{P}_N$ private from…