Related papers: Optimally Biased Expertise
A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. Initially, the agent does not observe the state, but he can acquire information about it at a cost. We characterize the…
A principal designs an algorithm that generates a publicly observable prediction of a binary state. She must decide whether to act directly based on the prediction or to delegate the decision to an agent with private information but…
When should we delegate decisions to AI systems? While the value alignment literature has developed techniques for shaping AI values, less attention has been paid to how to determine, under uncertainty, when imperfect alignment is good…
This paper studies delegation in a model of discrete choice. In the delegation problem, an uninformed principal must consult an informed agent to make a decision. Both the agent and principal have preferences over the decided-upon action…
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…
A principal and an agent can launch a project under unanimous consent. Their individual payoffs from the project depend on an underlying state, and the agent privately knows his own preference. The principal can conduct a test to learn…
This work considers a repeated principal-agent bandit game, where the principal can only interact with her environment through the agent. The principal and the agent have misaligned objectives and the choice of action is only left to the…
We study a model of delegation in which a principal takes a multidimensional action and an agent has private information about a multidimensional state of the world. The principal can design any direct mechanism, including stochastic ones.…
We study the classic principal-agent model when the signal observed by the principal is chosen by the agent. We fully characterize the optimal information structure from an agent's perspective in a general moral hazard setting with limited…
Decisions in organizations are about evaluating alternatives and choosing the one that would best serve organizational goals. To the extent that the evaluation of alternatives could be formulated as a predictive task with appropriate…
There are many settings in which a principal performs a task by delegating it to an agent, who searches over possible solutions and proposes one to the principal. This describes many aspects of the workflow within organizations, as well as…
We examine the strategic interaction between an expert (principal) maximizing engagement and an agent seeking swift information. Our analysis reveals: When priors align, relative patience determines optimal disclosure -- impatient agents…
A principal must decide between two options. Which one she prefers depends on the private information of two agents. One agent always prefers the first option; the other always prefers the second. Transfers are infeasible. One application…
Decision-makers in high-stakes selection processes often face a fundamental choice: whether to make decisions themselves or to delegate authority to another entity whose incentives may only be partially aligned with their own. Such…
This paper considers the hidden-action model of the principal-agent problem, in which a principal incentivizes an agent to work on a project using a contract. We investigate whether contracts with bounded payments are learnable and…
A principal can restrict an agent's information (the persuasion problem) or restrict an agent's discretion (the delegation problem). We show that these problems are generally equivalent - solving one solves the other. We use tools from the…
In order to study updating rules, we consider the problem of a malevolent principal screening an imperfectly Bayesian agent. We uncover a fundamental dichotomy between underreaction and overreaction to information. If an agent's posterior…
We consider a dynamic moral hazard problem between a principal and an agent, where the sole instrument the principal has to incentivize the agent is the disclosure of information. The principal aims at maximizing the (discounted) number of…
We introduce and study the problem of detecting whether an agent is updating their prior beliefs given new evidence in an optimal way that is Bayesian, or whether they are biased towards their own prior. In our model, biased agents form…
Appropriate decisions depend on information gathered beforehand, yet such information is often obtained through intermediaries with biased preferences. Motivated by settings such as testing and recertification in organ transplantation, we…