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We study a bilevel \emph{max-max} optimization framework for principal-agent contract design, in which a principal chooses incentives to maximize utility while anticipating the agent's best response. This problem, central to moral hazard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Tomer Galanti , Aarya Bookseller , Korok Ray

We study stochastic decision-theoretic online learning with full information and event-level pure differential privacy. A COLT open problem of Hu and Mehta asks to determine the optimal gap-dependent regret rate for stochastic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Tommaso Cesari , Roberto Colomboni

Bilateral trade models the problem of facilitating trades between a seller and a buyer having private valuations for the item being sold. In the online version of the problem, the learner faces a new seller and buyer at each time step, and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-29 Solenne Gaucher , Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Andrea Celli , Vianney Perchet

Bilateral trade is a central problem in algorithmic economics, and recent work has explored how to design trading mechanisms using no-regret learning algorithms. However, no-regret learning is impossible when budget balance has to be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-07-16 Anna Lunghi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi

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 consider the non-stochastic Multi-Armed Bandit problem in a setting where there is a fixed and known metric on the action space that determines a cost for switching between any pair of actions. The loss of the online learner has two…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-10-26 Tomer Koren , Roi Livni , Yishay Mansour

In the classical principal-agent problem, a principal must design a contract to incentivize an agent to perform an action on behalf of the principal. We study the classical principal-agent problem in a setting where the agent can be of one…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-10-15 Guru Guruganesh , Jon Schneider , Joshua Wang

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 investigate the hardness of online reinforcement learning in fixed horizon, sparse linear Markov decision process (MDP), with a special focus on the high-dimensional regime where the ambient dimension is larger than the number of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-11 Botao Hao , Tor Lattimore , Csaba Szepesvári , Mengdi Wang

We consider the problem of bidding in online advertising, where an advertiser aims to maximize value while adhering to budget and Return-on-Spend (RoS) constraints. Unlike prior work that assumes knowledge of the value generated by winning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-06 Sushant Vijayan , Zhe Feng , Swati Padmanabhan , Karthikeyan Shanmugam , Arun Suggala , Di Wang

We investigate the problem of online convex optimization with unknown delays, in which the feedback of a decision arrives with an arbitrary delay. Previous studies have presented a delayed variant of online gradient descent (OGD), and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-23 Yuanyu Wan , Wei-Wei Tu , Lijun Zhang

Team formation is ubiquitous in many sectors: education, labor markets, sports, etc. A team's success depends on its members' latent types, which are not directly observable but can be (partially) inferred from past performances. From the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-10-18 Matthew Eichhorn , Siddhartha Banerjee , David Kempe

We address online linear optimization problems when the possible actions of the decision maker are represented by binary vectors. The regret of the decision maker is the difference between her realized loss and the best loss she would have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2013-04-02 Jean-Yves Audibert , Sébastien Bubeck , Gábor Lugosi

Economic theory distinguishes between principal-agent settings in which the agent has a private type and settings in which the agent takes a hidden action. Many practical problems, however, involve aspects of both. For example, brand X may…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-24 Tal Alon , Paul Dütting , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We propose a new partial-observability model for online learning problems where the learner, besides its own loss, also observes some noisy feedback about the other actions, depending on the underlying structure of the problem. We represent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Tomáš Kocák , Gergely Neu , Michal Valko

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…

General Economics · Economics 2021-05-27 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

Bilateral trade models the task of intermediating between two strategic agents, a seller and a buyer, willing to trade a good for which they hold private valuations. We study this problem from the perspective of a broker, in a regret…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Simone Di Gregorio , Paul Dütting , Federico Fusco , Chris Schwiegelshohn

We investigate online convex optimization in non-stationary environments and choose the dynamic regret as the performance measure, defined as the difference between cumulative loss incurred by the online algorithm and that of any feasible…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-01 Peng Zhao , Yu-Jie Zhang , Lijun Zhang , Zhi-Hua Zhou

We study revenue optimization learning algorithms for posted-price auctions with strategic buyers. We analyze a very broad family of monotone regret minimization algorithms for this problem, which includes the previously best known…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2014-11-25 Mehryar Mohri , Andres Muñoz Medina

This paper considers online convex optimization over a complicated constraint set, which typically consists of multiple functional constraints and a set constraint. The conventional online projection algorithm (Zinkevich, 2003) can be…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-19 Hao Yu , Michael J. Neely