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Related papers: Ambiguous Contracts

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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 present a first approximation of agent behaviour in a generalized model in contract theory. This model relaxes some of the the assumptions of one of the classical models allowing to include a broader range of agents. We introduce the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2011-07-15 Francisco Gutiérrez , Camilo Argoty , Stefany Moreno

A principal has $m$ identical objects to allocate among a group of $n$ agents. Objects are desirable and the principal's value of assigning an object to an agent is the agent's private information. The principal can verify up to $k$ agents,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-09-04 Albin Erlanson , Andreas Kleiner

Contracts are a well-established approach for describing and analyzing behavioral aspects of web service compositions. The theory of contracts comes equipped with a notion of compatibility between clients and servers that ensures that every…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2011-01-26 Maria Grazia Buscemi , Hernán Melgratti

Ambiguity-averse decision makers typically dislike not only the presence of ambiguous events but also their increase, contrary to what standard ambiguity models predict. We axiomatically study such a decision maker. She avoids ex ante…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-25 Yutaro Akita , Kensei Nakamura

In this paper, we consider the revealed preferences problem from a learning perspective. Every day, a price vector and a budget is drawn from an unknown distribution, and a rational agent buys his most preferred bundle according to some…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-11-20 Morteza Zadimoghaddam , Aaron Roth

This paper studies dynamic asset allocation with interest rate risk and several sources of ambiguity. The market consists of a risk-free asset, a zero-coupon bond (both determined by a Vasicek model), and a stock. There is ambiguity about…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2023-10-30 Julian Hölzermann

A principal and an agent face symmetric uncertainty about the value of two correlated projects for the agent. The principal chooses which project values to publicly discover and makes a proposal to the agent, who accepts if and only if the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-11-22 Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler

We investigate the problem of a principal looking to contract an expert to provide a probability forecast for a categorical event. We assume all experts have a common public prior on the event's probability, but can form more accurate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-04-30 Mark Braverman , Gal Oshri

We study the design of an optimal insurance contract in which the insured maximizes her expected utility and the insurer limits the variance of his risk exposure while maintaining the principle of indemnity and charging the premium…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2020-08-18 Yichun Chi , Xun Yu Zhou , Sheng Chao Zhuang

Motivated by the recent popularity of machine learning training services, we introduce a contract design problem in which a provider sells a service that results in an outcome of uncertain quality for the buyer. The seller has a set of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Krishnamurthy Iyer , Alec Sun , Haifeng Xu , You Zu

Fraud can pose a challenge in many resource allocation domains, including social service delivery and credit provision. For example, agents may misreport private information in order to gain benefits or access to credit. To mitigate this, a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Sanmay Das , Fang-Yi Yu , Yuang Zhang

In this paper we formulate a contract design problem where a primary license holder wishes to profit from its excess spectrum capacity by selling it to potential secondary users/buyers. It needs to determine how to optimally price the…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2012-07-30 Shang-Pin Sheng , Mingyan Liu

Negotiation is a very common interaction between automated agents. Many common negotiation protocols work with cardinal utilities, even though ordinal preferences, which only rank the outcomes, are easier to elicit from humans. In this work…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-18 Sefi Erlich , Noam Hazon , Sarit Kraus

We present a novel bilateral negotiation model that allows a self-interested agent to learn how to negotiate over multiple issues in the presence of user preference uncertainty. The model relies upon interpretable strategy templates…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2022-01-10 Pallavi Bagga , Nicola Paoletti , Kostas Stathis

Crowdsourced data used in machine learning services might carry sensitive information about attributes that users do not want to share. Various methods have been proposed to minimize the potential information leakage of sensitive attributes…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Han Zhao , Jianfeng Chi , Yuan Tian , Geoffrey J. Gordon

We introduce a model of probabilistic verification in mechanism design. The principal elicits a message from the agent and then selects a test to give the agent. The agent's true type determines the probability with which he can pass each…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-01-16 Ian Ball , Deniz Kattwinkel

We study the optimal auction design problem when bidders' preferences follow the maxmin expected utility model. We suppose that each bidder's set of priors consists of beliefs close to the seller's belief, where "closeness" is defined by a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-10-19 Sosung Baik , Sung-Ha Hwang

We consider a seller who offers services to a buyer with multi-unit demand. Prior to the realization of demand, the buyer receives a noisy signal of their future demand, and the seller can design contracts based on the reported value of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-02-13 Dirk Bergemann , Michael C. Wang

Teaching an agent to perform new tasks using natural language can easily be hindered by ambiguities in interpretation. When a teacher provides an instruction to a learner about an object by referring to its features, the learner can…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-28 Hugo Caselles-Dupré , Olivier Sigaud , Mohamed Chetouani