Related papers: Successive Incentives
Incentive design problems consider a system planner who steers self-interested agents toward a socially optimal Nash equilibrium by issuing incentives in the presence of information asymmetry, that is, uncertainty about the agents' cost…
In mechanism design it is typical to impose incentive compatibility and then derive an optimal mechanism subject to this constraint. By replacing the incentive compatibility requirement with the goal of minimizing expected ex post regret,…
Incentives are key to the success of crowdsourcing which heavily depends on the level of user participation. This paper designs an incentive mechanism to motivate a heterogeneous crowd of users to actively participate in crowdsourcing…
Selective labels are a common feature of consequential decision-making applications, referring to the lack of observed outcomes under one of the possible decisions. This paper reports work in progress on learning decision policies in the…
In dynamic noncooperative games, each player makes conjectures about other players' reactions before choosing a strategy. However, resulting equilibria may be multiple and do not always lead to desirable outcomes. These issues are typically…
We study the problem of scheduling periodic real-time tasks so as to meet their individual minimum reward requirements. A task generates jobs that can be given arbitrary service times before their deadlines. A task then obtains rewards…
How can a social planner adaptively incentivize selfish agents who are learning in a strategic environment to induce a socially optimal outcome in the long run? We propose a two-timescale learning dynamics to answer this question in both…
In this work we investigate the inefficiency of the electricity system with strategic agents. Specifically, we prove that without a proper control the total demand of an inefficient system is at most twice the total demand of the optimal…
We consider an autonomous navigation problem, whereby a traveler aims at traversing an environment in which an adversary tries to set an ambush. A two players zero sum game is introduced. Players' strategies are computed as random path…
We study repeated task assignment as an instrument for providing effort incentives. Unlike traditional incentive instruments, assignment of a task both determines who produces and provides incentives, and incentives for one worker spill…
Following the risk-taking model of Seel and Strack, $n$ players decide when to stop privately observed Brownian motions with drift and absorption at zero. They are then ranked according to their level of stopping and paid a rank-dependent…
We study the optimal allocation of prizes in rank-order tournaments with loss averse agents. Prize sharing becomes increasingly optimal with loss aversion because more equitable prizes reduce the marginal psychological cost of anticipated…
Reward design is a fundamental problem in reinforcement learning (RL). A misspecified or poorly designed reward can result in low sample efficiency and undesired behaviors. In this paper, we propose the idea of programmatic reward design,…
In many professons employees are rewarded according to their relative performance. Corresponding economy can be modeled by taking $N$ independent agents who gain from the market with a rate which depends on their current gain. We argue that…
We consider a finite-horizon discrete-time dynamic system that is jointly controlled by two strategic agents. There is a system designer that has its own reward function but does not have direct control over the agents' actions. We consider…
This paper introduces a model of a stylized organization that is comprised of several departments that autonomously allocate tasks. To do so, the departments either take short-sighted decisions that immediately maximize their utility or…
Infinitely repeated games can support cooperative outcomes that are not equilibria in the one-shot game. The idea is to make sure that any gains from deviating will be offset by retaliation in future rounds. However, this model of…
We examine sequential equilibrium in the context of computational games, where agents are charged for computation. In such games, an agent can rationally choose to forget, so issues of imperfect recall arise. In this setting, we consider…
This paper characterizes optimal classification when individuals adjust their behavior in response to the classification rule. We model the interaction between a designer and a population as a Stackelberg game: the designer selects a…
How do incentive levels affect strategic behaviour? We address this with an experiment that separately identifies own- and opponent-incentive effects in two dominance-solvable games that differ in strategic complexity. Higher own incentives…