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Related papers: Should the Timing of Inspections be Predictable?

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Contract scheduling is a general technique that allows to design a system with interruptible capabilities, given an algorithm that is not necessarily interruptible. Previous work on this topic has largely assumed that the interruption is a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-11-26 Spyros Angelopoulos , Shahin Kamali

We study how to optimally design selection mechanisms, accounting for agents' investment incentives. A principal wishes to allocate a resource of homogeneous quality to a heterogeneous population of agents. The principal commits to a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-11 Victor Augias , Eduardo Perez-Richet

Power-seeking behavior is a key source of risk from advanced AI, but our theoretical understanding of this phenomenon is relatively limited. Building on existing theoretical results demonstrating power-seeking incentives for most reward…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-04-14 Victoria Krakovna , Janos Kramar

In a decision-making scenario, a principal could use conditional predictions from an expert agent to inform their choice. However, this approach would introduce a fundamental conflict of interest. An agent optimizing for predictive accuracy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-31 Rubi Hudson

Algorithmic predictions are increasingly informing societal resource allocations by identifying individuals for targeting. Policymakers often build these systems with the assumption that by gathering more observations on individuals, they…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Ali Shirali , Ariel Procaccia , Rediet Abebe

Employers are concerned not only with a prospective worker's ability, but also their propensity to avoid shirking. This paper proposes a new experimental framework to study how Principals trade-off measures of ability and prosocial behavior…

General Economics · Economics 2025-11-03 Andrew Leal

A principal hires an agent to acquire soft information about an unknown state. Even though neither how the agent learns nor what the agent discovers are contractible, we show the principal is unconstrained as to what information the agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-07-31 Mark Whitmeyer , Kun Zhang

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 consider a principal agent project selection problem with asymmetric information. There are $N$ projects and the principal must select exactly one of them. Each project provides some profit to the principal and some payoff to the agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-04-15 Sumit Goel , Wade Hann-Caruthers

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…

General Economics · Economics 2021-07-09 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

In Reinforcement Learning interpretability generally means to provide insight into the agent's mechanisms such that its decisions are understandable by an expert upon inspection. This definition, with the resulting methods from the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-03-10 Michele Persiani , Thomas Hellström

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

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

We show that in delegation problems, a principal benefits from belief misalignment vis-\`a-vis an agent when the latter can flexibly acquire costly information. The agent optimally succumbs to confirmatory learning, leading him to favor the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-30 Pavel Ilinov , Andrei Matveenko , Maxim Senkov , Egor Starkov

We consider settings where an uninformed principal must hear arguments from two better-informed agents, corresponding to two possible courses of action that they argue for. The arguments are verifiable in the sense that the true state of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Alexander Heckett , Vincent Conitzer

Prescriptive process monitoring approaches leverage historical data to prescribe runtime interventions that will likely prevent negative case outcomes or improve a process's performance. A centerpiece of a prescriptive process monitoring…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-06-17 Mahmoud Shoush , Marlon Dumas

In this paper, we analyse inspection games with an evolutionary perspective. In our evolutionary inspection game with a large population, each individual is not a rational payoff maximiser, but periodically updates his strategy if he…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2013-06-19 Vassili Kolokoltsov , Hemant Passi , Wei Yang

We investigate the mechanism design problem faced by a principal who hires \emph{multiple} agents to gather and report costly information. Then, the principal exploits the information to make an informed decision. We model this problem as a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Federico Cacciamani , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Donya G. Dobakhshari , Lav R. Varshney , Vijay Gupta

We study a dynamic contracting problem with multiple agents and limited commitment. A principal seeks to screen efficient agents using one-period contracts, but is tempted to revise contract terms upon knowing an agent's type. Alterations…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-03-24 Mehmet Ekmekci , Lucas Maestri , Dong Wei