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Our goal is to solve both problems of adverse selection and moral hazard for multi-agent projects. In our model, each selected agent can work according to his private "capability tree". This means a process involving hidden actions, hidden…

Other Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-01-11 Endre Csóka

We study repeated two-player games where one of the players, the learner, employs a no-regret learning strategy, while the other, the optimizer, is a rational utility maximizer. We consider general Bayesian games, where the payoffs of both…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-19 Yishay Mansour , Mehryar Mohri , Jon Schneider , Balasubramanian Sivan

This paper studies a dynamic screening model in which a principal hires an agent with limited liability. The agent's private cost of working is an i.i.d. draw from a continuous distribution. His working status is publicly observable. The…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-26 Yijun Liu

Principal-agent problems model scenarios where a principal incentivizes an agent to take costly, unobservable actions through the provision of payments. Such problems are ubiquitous in several real-world applications, ranging from…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-27 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Jiarui Gan , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We consider a moral hazard problem with multiple principals in a continuous-time model. The agent can only work exclusively for one principal at a given time, so faces an optimal switching problem. Using a randomized formulation, we manage…

Probability · Mathematics 2022-09-14 Kaitong Hu , Zhenjie Ren , Junjian Yang

We consider a bandit recommendations problem in which an agent's preferences (representing selection probabilities over recommended items) evolve as a function of past selections, according to an unknown $\textit{preference model}$. In each…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-07 Arpit Agarwal , William Brown

We study a principal-agent problem with adverse selection, where the principal does not know the agent's true cost but must design a contract to optimize a specific criterion. Unlike standard screening frameworks that allow for…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-19 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Ibrahim Ekren , Liwei Huang

Regret minimization is treated as the golden rule in the traditional study of online learning. However, regret minimization algorithms tend to converge to the static optimum, thus being suboptimal for changing environments. To address this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-07 Lijun Zhang , Shiyin Lu , Tianbao Yang

The minmax regret problem for combinatorial optimization under uncertainty can be viewed as a zero-sum game played between an optimizing player and an adversary, where the optimizing player selects a solution and the adversary selects costs…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2014-09-23 Andrew Mastin , Patrick Jaillet , Sang Chin

We study hidden-action principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (called contract) so as to incentivize the agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. In…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-08-18 Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

We discuss voting scenarios in which the set of voters (agents) and the set of alternatives are the same; that is, voters select a single representative from among themselves. Such a scenario happens, for instance, when a committee selects…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-07-23 Yakov Babichenko , Oren Dean , Moshe Tennenholtz

We consider the setting of iterative learning control, or model-based policy learning in the presence of uncertain, time-varying dynamics. In this setting, we propose a new performance metric, planning regret, which replaces the standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Naman Agarwal , Elad Hazan , Anirudha Majumdar , Karan Singh

The problem of computing near-optimal contracts in combinatorial settings has recently attracted significant interest in the computer science community. Previous work has provided a rich body of structural and algorithmic insights into this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-26 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

Mechanism design is a central research branch in microeconomics. An effective mechanism can significantly improve performance and efficiency of social decisions under desired objectives, such as to maximize social welfare or to maximize…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2022-04-18 Guanhua Wang

Strategic learning studies how decision rules interact with agents who may strategically change their inputs/features to achieve better outcomes. In standard settings, models assume that the decision-maker's sole scope is to learn a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-23 Valia Efthymiou , Ekaterina Fedorova , Chara Podimata

In this paper, we investigate the existence of online learning algorithms with bandit feedback that simultaneously guarantee $O(1)$ regret compared to a given comparator strategy, and $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{T})$ regret compared to any fixed…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-05 Adrian Müller , Jon Schneider , Stratis Skoulakis , Luca Viano , Volkan Cevher

Algorithmic decision-making in high-stakes domains often involves assigning decisions to agents with incentives to strategically modify their input to the algorithm. In addition to dealing with incentives, in many domains of interest (e.g.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-31 Keegan Harris , Chara Podimata , Zhiwei Steven Wu

We consider the mechanism design problem of a principal allocating a single good to one of several agents without monetary transfers. Each agent desires the good and uses it to create value for the principal. We designate this value as the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-06-26 Halil İbrahim Bayrak , Çağıl Koçyiğit , Daniel Kuhn , Mustafa Çelebi Pınar

The theory of reinforcement learning has focused on two fundamental problems: achieving low regret, and identifying $\epsilon$-optimal policies. While a simple reduction allows one to apply a low-regret algorithm to obtain an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-23 Andrew Wagenmaker , Max Simchowitz , Kevin Jamieson

We study the contextual multi-armed bandit problem with a finite context space (a.k.a. subpopulations), where the learner recommends a best action for each context and is evaluated by context-weighted simple regret. Our guarantees are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Mohammad Shahverdikondori , Jalal Etesami , Negar Kiyavash