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We study linear contracts for combinatorial problems in multi-agent settings. In this problem, a principal designs a linear contract with several agents, each of whom can decide to take a costly action or not. The principal observes only…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-12-19 Kanstantsin Pashkovich , Jacob Skitsko

User preference learning is generally a hard problem. Individual preferences are typically unknown even to users themselves, while the space of choices is infinite. Here we study user preference learning from information-theoretic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-27 Tanya Ignatenko , Kirill Kondrashov , Marco Cox , Bert de Vries

It is challenging to quantify numerical preferences for different objectives in a multi-objective decision-making problem. However, the demonstrations of a user are often accessible. We propose an algorithm to infer linear preference…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-04-28 Junlin Lu

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

We introduce and study the persuasive calibration problem, where a principal aims to provide trustworthy predictions about underlying events to a downstream agent to make desired decisions. We adopt the standard calibration framework that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-07 Yiding Feng , Wei Tang

We study bilateral trade with interdependent values as an informed-principal problem. The mechanism-selection game has multiple equilibria that differ with respect to principal's payoff and trading surplus. We characterize the equilibrium…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-02-22 Takeshi Nishimura

The problem of peer prediction is to elicit information from agents in settings without any objective ground truth against which to score reports. Peer prediction mechanisms seek to exploit correlations between signals to align incentives…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-06-20 Victor Shnayder , Arpit Agarwal , Rafael Frongillo , David C. Parkes

What is the purpose of pre-analysis plans, and how should they be designed? We model the interaction between an agent who analyzes data and a principal who makes a decision based on agent reports. The agent could be the manufacturer of a…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-07-30 Maximilian Kasy , Jann Spiess

As artificial agents become increasingly capable, what internal structure is *necessary* for an agent to act competently under uncertainty? Classical results show that optimal control can be *implemented* using belief states or world…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Aran Nayebi

In this paper, we study belief elicitation about an uncertain future event, where the reports will affect a principal's decision. We study two problems that can arise in this setting: (1) Agents may have an interest in the outcome of the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-01 Manuel Wuthrich , Mark York , David C. Parkes

This paper studies the provision of incentives for information acquisition. Information is costly for an agent to acquire and unobservable to a principal. We show that any Pareto optimal contract has a decomposition into a fraction of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-03-09 Aubrey Clark , Giovanni Reggiani

Motivated by online platforms such as job markets, we study an agent choosing from a list of candidates, each with a hidden quality that determines match value. The agent observes only a noisy ranking of the candidates plus a binary signal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-26 Kate Donahue , Nicole Immorlica , Brendan Lucier

I introduce a model of predictive scoring. A receiver wants to predict a sender's quality. An intermediary observes multiple features of the sender and aggregates them into a score. Based on the score, the receiver makes a decision. The…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-05-17 Ian Ball

I study a moral hazard problem between a principal and multiple agents who experience positive peer effects represented by a (weighted) network. Under the optimal linear contract, the principal provides high-powered incentives to central…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-06-18 Marc Claveria-Mayol

We study a natural combinatorial single-principal multi-agent contract design problem, in which a principal motivates a team of agents to exert effort toward a given task. At the heart of our model is a reward function, which maps the agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Paul Duetting , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Thomas Kesselheim

This paper characterises optimal incentive schemes for ESG disclosure in a continuous-time principal-agent setting. We model a risk-averse principal (e.g., a platform or standard-setter) contracting with a team of heterogeneous agents whose…

General Economics · Economics 2026-04-28 Imen Ben Tahar , Dylan Possamaï , Xiaolu Tan

We study multi-agent contract design, where a principal incentivizes a team of agents to take costly actions that jointly determine the project success via a combinatorial reward function. While prior work largely focuses on unconstrained…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

A principal selects a team of agents for collaborating on a joint project. The principal aims to design a revenue-optimal contract that incentivize the team of agents to exert costly effort while satisfying fairness constraints. We show…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Matteo Castiglioni , Junjie Chen , Yingkai Li

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 study a ubiquitous learning challenge in online principal-agent problems during which the principal learns the agent's private information from the agent's revealed preferences in historical interactions. This paradigm includes important…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-01 Minbiao Han , Michael Albert , Haifeng Xu