Related papers: On the (In)approximability of Combinatorial Contra…
Multiagent systems can use commitments as the core of a general coordination infrastructure, supporting both cooperative and non-cooperative interactions. Agents whose objectives are aligned, and where one agent can help another achieve…
We investigate the probabilistic feasibility of randomized solutions to two distinct classes of uncertain multi-agent optimization programs. We first assume that only the constraints of the program are affected by uncertainty, while the…
We initiate the study of online contracts, which integrate the game-theoretic considerations of economic contract theory, with the algorithmic and informational challenges of online algorithm design. Our starting point is the classic online…
In many multiagent domains a set of agents exert effort towards a joint outcome, yet the individual effort levels cannot be easily observed. A typical example for such a scenario is routing in communication networks, where the sender can…
We study a robust contract design problem with deferred inspection, in which a principal allocates a scarce resource to an agent, observes the agent's realized outcome ex post at negligible cost, and conditions transfers on this information…
Algorithmic contract design studies scenarios where a principal incentivizes an agent to exert effort on her behalf. In this work, we focus on settings where the agent's type is drawn from an unknown distribution, and formalize an offline…
Multi-agent contract design has largely evaluated contracts through the lens of pure Nash equilibria (PNE). This focus, however, is not without loss: In general, the principal can strictly gain by recommending a complex, possibly…
We develop a framework for obtaining polynomial time approximation schemes (PTAS) for a class of stochastic dynamic programs. Using our framework, we obtain the first PTAS for the following stochastic combinatorial optimization problems:…
Multi-agent systems can be extremely efficient when working concurrently and collaboratively, e.g., for transportation, maintenance, search and rescue. Coordination of such teams often involves two aspects: (i) selecting appropriate…
In Combinatorial Public Projects, there is a set of projects that may be undertaken, and a set of self-interested players with a stake in the set of projects chosen. A public planner must choose a subset of these projects, subject to a…
We propose a distributionally robust principal agent formulation, which generalizes some common variants of worst-case and Bayesian principal agent problems. We construct a theoretical framework to certify whether any surjective contract…
We present a unified framework for designing deterministic monotone polynomial time approximation schemes (PTAS's) for a wide class of scheduling problems on uniformly related machines. This class includes (among others) minimizing the…
This paper focuses on a class of inclusion problems of maximal monotone operators in a multi-agent network, where each agent is characterized by an operator that is not available to any other agents, but the agents can cooperate by…
Constrained maximization of submodular functions poses a central problem in combinatorial optimization. In many realistic scenarios, a number of agents need to maximize multiple submodular objectives over the same ground set. We study such…
In combinatorial auctions, a designer must decide how to allocate a set of indivisible items amongst a set of bidders. Each bidder has a valuation function which gives the utility they obtain from any subset of the items. Our focus is…
In this paper, we initiate the computational problem of jointly designing information and contracts. We consider three possible classes of contracts with decreasing flexibility and increasing simplicity: ambiguous contracts, menus of…
Economic theory distinguishes between principal-agent settings in which the agent has a private type and settings in which the agent takes a hidden action. Many practical problems, however, involve aspects of both. For example, brand X may…
Collaboration is crucial for reaching collective goals. However, its effectiveness is often undermined by the strategic behavior of individual agents -- a fact that is captured by a high Price of Stability (PoS) in recent literature [Blum…
We introduce a combinatorial variant of the cost sharing problem: several services can be provided to each player and each player values every combination of services differently. A publicly known cost function specifies the cost of…
We study the problem of how to coordinate the actions of independent agents in a distributed system where message arrival times are unbounded, but are determined by an exponential probability distribution. Asynchronous protocols executed in…