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In this article, we employ a principal-agent model to analyze optimal contract design in a monopolistic reinsurance market under adverse selection with a continuum of insurer types. Instead of using the classical expected utility framework,…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-01-06 Ka Chun Cheung , Sheung Chi Phillip Yam , Fei Lung Yuen , Yiying Zhang

In this paper we consider a principal agent problem where the agent is allowed to quit, by incurring a cost. When the current agent quits the job, the principal will hire a new one, possibly with a different type. We characterize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-04 Jianfeng Zhang , Zimu Zhu

In many sequential decision problems, an agent performs a repeated task. He then suffers regret and obtains information that he may use in the following rounds. However, sometimes the agent may also obtain information and avoid suffering…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Itai Shufaro , Nadav Merlis , Nir Weinberger , Shie Mannor

Firms have access to abundant data on market participants. They use these data to target contracts to agents with specific characteristics, and describe these contracts in opaque terms. In response to such practices, recent proposed…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-02-01 Andreas Haupt , Zoe Hitzig

In recent years, a significant research effort has been devoted to the design of distributed protocols for the control of multi-agent systems, as the scale and limited communication bandwidth characteristic of such systems render…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-06-09 Rohit Konda , Rahul Chandan , Jason R. Marden

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

We study the problem of multi-agent control of a dynamical system with known dynamics and adversarial disturbances. Our study focuses on optimal control without centralized precomputed policies, but rather with adaptive control policies for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-27 Udaya Ghai , Udari Madhushani , Naomi Leonard , Elad Hazan

This study introduces an agent-based model to study how regret, uncertainty, and social norms interact to shape vaccination behavior during epidemics. The model integrates three behavioral mechanisms, anticipated regret, evolving norms, and…

Physics and Society · Physics 2025-11-18 Christos Charalambous

A principal who values an object allocates it to one or more agents. Agents learn private information (signals) from an information designer about the allocation payoff to the principal. Monetary transfer is not available but the principal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-10-31 Yi-Chun Chen , Gaoji Hu , Xiangqian Yang

Making an informed decision -- for example, when choosing a career or housing -- requires knowledge about the available options. Such knowledge is generally acquired through costly trial and error, but this learning process can be disrupted…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-15 Sarah H. Cen , Devavrat Shah

It is common to encounter the situation with uncertainty for decision makers (DMs) in dealing with a complex decision making problem. The existing evidence shows that people usually fear the extreme uncertainty named as the unknown. This…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-08-05 Fang Liu

We present a study on a repeated delegated choice problem, which is the first to consider an online learning variant of Kleinberg and Kleinberg, EC'18. In this model, a principal interacts repeatedly with an agent who possesses an exogenous…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-15 MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi , Mohammad Mahdavi , Keivan Rezaei , Suho Shin

We consider control of uncertain linear time-varying stochastic systems from the perspective of regret minimization. Specifically, we focus on the problem of designing a feedback controller that minimizes the loss relative to a clairvoyant…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-04 Andrea Martin , Luca Furieri , Florian Dörfler , John Lygeros , Giancarlo Ferrari-Trecate

In a framework close to the one developed by Holmstr\"om and Milgrom [44], we study the optimal contracting scheme between a Principal and several Agents. Each hired Agent is in charge of one project, and can make efforts towards managing…

Economics · Quantitative Finance 2016-05-27 Romuald Elie , Dylan Possamaï

This paper proposes a method to design an optimal dynamic contract between a principal and an agent, who has the authority to control both the principal's revenue and an engineered system. The key characteristic of our problem setting is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-03-24 Insoon Yang , Duncan S. Callaway , Claire J. Tomlin

A principal must decide between two options. Which one she prefers depends on the private information of two agents. One agent always prefers the first option; the other always prefers the second. Transfers are infeasible. One application…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-05-24 Deniz Kattwinkel , Axel Niemeyer , Justus Preusser , Alexander Winter

I provide a sufficient condition under which a principal does not benefit from committing to a mechanism in economic models represented by a maximisation problem under constraints. These problems include mechanism design, principal-agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-10-10 Nathan Hancart

We study principal-agent problems where a farsighted agent takes costly actions in an MDP. The core challenge in these settings is that agent's actions are hidden to the principal, who can only observe their outcomes, namely state…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-18 Matteo Bollini , Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

Incentive design is a popular framework for guiding agents' learning dynamics towards desired outcomes by providing additional payments beyond intrinsic rewards. However, most existing works focus on a finite, small set of agents or assume…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Leo Widmer , Jiawei Huang , Niao He

We study the problem of learning the utility functions of no-regret learning agents in a repeated normal-form game. Differing from most prior literature, we introduce a principal with the power to observe the agents playing the game, send…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Brian Hu Zhang , Tao Lin , Yiling Chen , Tuomas Sandholm