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Environments with fixed adjustment costs such as transaction costs or \lq menu costs\rq$ $ are widespread within economic systems. The presence of fixed minimal adjustment costs produces adjustment stickiness so that agents must choose a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-09 David Mguni

We introduce an agent-based model of delegation relationships between a principal and an agent, which is based on the standard-hidden action model introduced by Holmstr\"om and, by doing so, provide a model which can be used to further…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-09-29 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

This paper studies continuous-time optimal contracting in a hierarchy problem which generalises the model of Sung (2015). The hierarchy is modeled by a series of interlinked principal-agent problems, leading to a sequence of Stackelberg…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-22 Emma Hubert

We initiate the study of computing (near-)optimal contracts in succinctly representable principal-agent settings. Here optimality means maximizing the principal's expected payoff over all incentive-compatible contracts---known in economics…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-02-28 Paul Duetting , Tim Roughgarden , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

In a framework close to the one developed by Holmstr\"om and Milgrom [44], we study the optimal contracting scheme between a Principal and several Agents. Each hired Agent is in charge of one project, and can make efforts towards managing…

Economics · Quantitative Finance 2016-05-27 Romuald Elie , Dylan Possamaï

Real-world applications of reinforcement learning for recommendation and experimentation faces a practical challenge: the relative reward of different bandit arms can evolve over the lifetime of the learning agent. To deal with these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-29 Srivas Chennu , Andrew Maher , Jamie Martin , Subash Prabanantham

The recent work by Cvitani\'c, Possama\"i, and Touzi (2018) [9] presents a general approach for continuous-time principal-agent problems, through dynamic programming and second-order backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs). In…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-06-16 Alessandro Chiusolo , Emma Hubert

We consider a general formulation of the random horizon Principal-Agent problem with a continuous payment and a lump-sum payment at termination. In the European version of the problem, the random horizon is chosen solely by the principal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-11 Yiqing Lin , Zhenjie Ren , Nizar Touzi , Junjian Yang

In this paper, we address three Principal--Agent problems in a moral hazard context and show that they are connected. We start by studying the problem of Principal with multiple Agents in cooperation. The term cooperation is manifested here…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-23 Mao Fabrice Djete

The exploration-exploitation trade-off is among the central challenges of reinforcement learning. The optimal Bayesian solution is intractable in general. This paper studies to what extent analytic statements about optimal learning are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2015-03-13 Philipp Hennig

We study a Bayesian persuasion problem with externalities. In this model, a principal sends signals to inform multiple agents about the state of the world. Simultaneously, due to the existence of externalities in the agents' utilities, the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-18 Jonathan Shaki , Jiarui Gan , Sarit Kraus

This paper studies optimal consensus tracking problem of heterogeneous linear multi-agent systems. By introducing tracking error dynamics, the optimal tracking problem is reformulated as finding a Nash-equilibrium solution of a multi-player…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-05-21 Jilie Zhang , Zhanshan Wang , Hongwei Zhang

We study hidden-action principal-agent problems with multiple agents. These are problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme in order to incentivize some agents to take costly, unobservable actions that lead…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-02-01 Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We propose to study electricity capacity remuneration mechanism design through a Principal-Agent approach. The Principal represents the aggregation of electricity consumers (or a representative entity), subject to the physical risk of…

General Economics · Economics 2020-09-02 Clémence Alasseur , Heythem Farhat , Marcelo Saguan

Due to its state-of-the-art estimation performance complemented by rigorous and non-conservative uncertainty bounds, Gaussian process regression is a popular tool for enhancing dynamical system models and coping with their inaccuracies.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-02-05 Anna Scampicchio , Elena Arcari , Amon Lahr , Melanie N. Zeilinger

In a continuous-time setting where a risk-averse agent controls the drift of an output process driven by a Brownian motion, optimal contracts are linear in the terminal output; this result is well-known in a setting with moral hazard and…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2018-07-31 N. Packham

We study a variant of the principal-agent problem in which the principal does not directly observe the agent's effort outcome; rather, she gets a signal about the agent's action according to a variable information structure designed by a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Yakov Babichenko , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Haifeng Xu , Konstantin Zabarnyi

The problem of computing near-optimal contracts in combinatorial settings has recently attracted significant interest in the computer science community. Previous work has provided a rich body of structural and algorithmic insights into this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-26 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

In this paper, we investigate a moral hazard problem in finite time with lump$-$sum and continuous payments, involving infinitely many Agents with mean field type interactions, hired by one Principal. By reinterpreting the mean$-$field game…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Romuald Elie , Thibaut Mastrolia , Dylan Possamaï

We study a continuous time contracting model in which a principal hires a risk averse agent to manage a project over a finite horizon and provides sequential payments whose timing is endogenously determined. The resulting nonzero-sum…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-12-01 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Ibrahim Ekren , Liwei Huang