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Related papers: Principal-Agent Reward Shaping in MDPs

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How do you incentivize self-interested agents to $\textit{explore}$ when they prefer to $\textit{exploit}$? We consider complex exploration problems, where each agent faces the same (but unknown) MDP. In contrast with traditional…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-21 Max Simchowitz , Aleksandrs Slivkins

We consider episodic reinforcement learning in reward-mixing Markov decision processes (RMMDPs): at the beginning of every episode nature randomly picks a latent reward model among $M$ candidates and an agent interacts with the MDP…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-07 Jeongyeol Kwon , Yonathan Efroni , Constantine Caramanis , Shie Mannor

We address the problem of reinforcement learning in which observations may exhibit an arbitrary form of stochastic dependence on past observations and actions, i.e. environments more general than (PO)MDPs. The task for an agent is to attain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2009-12-30 Daniil Ryabko , Marcus Hutter

As LLMs increasingly act as autonomous agents in interactive and multi-agent settings, understanding their strategic behavior is critical for safety, coordination, and AI-driven social and economic systems. We investigate how payoff…

In the coming years, AI agents will be used for making more complex decisions, including in situations involving many different groups of people. One big challenge is that AI agent tends to act in its own interest, unlike humans who often…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Shunichi Akatsuka , Yaemi Teramoto , Aaron Courville

This contribution deals with a two-level discrete decision problem, a so-called Stackelberg strategic game: A Subset Sum setting is addressed with a set $N$ of items with given integer weights. One distinguished player, the leader, may…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2018-01-12 Ulrich Pferschy , Gaia Nicosia , Andrea Pacifici

In principal-agent models, a principal offers a contract to an agent to perform a certain task. The agent exerts a level of effort that maximizes her utility. The principal is oblivious to the agent's chosen level of effort, and conditions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Alon Cohen , Moran Koren , Argyrios Deligkas

Some of the most relevant future applications of multi-agent systems like autonomous driving or factories as a service display mixed-motive scenarios, where agents might have conflicting goals. In these settings agents are likely to learn…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2022-07-20 Kyrill Schmid , Lenz Belzner , Robert Müller , Johannes Tochtermann , Claudia Linnhoff-Popien

Many real-life contractual relations differ completely from the clean, static model at the heart of principal-agent theory. Typically, they involve repeated strategic interactions of the principal and agent, taking place under uncertainty…

This work focuses on the entropy-regularized independent natural policy gradient (NPG) algorithm in multi-agent reinforcement learning. In this work, agents are assumed to have access to an oracle with exact policy evaluation and seek to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-07 Youbang Sun , Tao Liu , P. R. Kumar , Shahin Shahrampour

Multiagent systems where agents interact among themselves and with a stochastic environment can be formalized as stochastic games. We study a subclass named Markov potential games (MPGs) that appear often in economic and engineering…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2018-05-23 Sergio Valcarcel Macua , Javier Zazo , Santiago Zazo

We study how to allocate resources to participants who can strategically misrepresent their deservingness at a cost. A principal assigns item(s) (or money) among multiple agents on the basis of their costly signals. Each agent's signal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-03-05 Yingkai Li , Xiaoyun Qiu

One major limitation to the applicability of Reinforcement Learning (RL) to many practical domains is the large number of samples required to learn an optimal policy. To address this problem and improve learning efficiency, we consider a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-07 Roberto Cipollone , Giuseppe De Giacomo , Marco Favorito , Luca Iocchi , Fabio Patrizi

Multi-agent Markov Decision Processes (MMDPs) arise in a variety of applications including target tracking, control of multi-robot swarms, and multiplayer games. A key challenge in MMDPs occurs when the state and action spaces grow…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-03-31 Dinuka Sahabandu , Luyao Niu , Andrew Clark , Radha Poovendran

Strategy learning in game environments with multi-agent is a challenging problem. Since each agent's reward is determined by the joint strategy, a greedy learning strategy that aims to maximize its own reward may fall into a local optimum.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Xinyu Qiao , Yudong Hu , Congying Han , Weiyan Wu , Tiande Guo

We analyze a model of selling a single object to a principal-agent pair who want to acquire the object for a firm. The principal and the agent have different assessments of the object's value to the firm. The agent is budget-constrained…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-10-07 Debasis Mishra , Kolagani Paramahamsa

We study the problem of multi-agent reinforcement learning (multi-agent RL) with differential privacy (DP) constraints. This is well-motivated by various real-world applications involving sensitive data, where it is critical to protect…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-12 Dan Qiao , Yu-Xiang Wang

We study optimal contract design for large populations of heterogeneous agents whose actions generate network spillovers represented by an interaction function. In a linear-quadratic framework, we solve the finite-agent problem and its…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-19 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Erhan Bayraktar , Ibrahim Ekren

We consider a number of questions related to tradeoffs between reward and regret in repeated gameplay between two agents. To facilitate this, we introduce a notion of $\textit{generalized equilibrium}$ which allows for asymmetric regret…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-19 William Brown , Jon Schneider , Kiran Vodrahalli

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