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The agency problem emerges in today's large scale machine learning tasks, where the learners are unable to direct content creation or enforce data collection. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework for aligning economic interests…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Jibang Wu , Siyu Chen , Mengdi Wang , Huazheng Wang , Haifeng Xu

We introduce an agent-based model of delegation relationships between a principal and an agent, which is based on the standard-hidden action model introduced by Holmstr\"om and, by doing so, provide a model which can be used to further…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-09-29 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

We consider the classic principal-agent model of contract theory, in which a principal designs an outcome-dependent compensation scheme to incentivize an agent to take a costly and unobservable action. When all of the model…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-11 Paul Dütting , Tim Roughgarden , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

In applications such as participatory sensing and crowd sensing, self-interested agents exert costly effort towards achieving an objective for the system operator. We study such a setup where a principal incentivizes multiple agents of…

Signal Processing · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-05-11 Nayara Aguiar , Parv Venkitasubramaniam , Vijay Gupta

User models in information retrieval rest on a foundational assumption that observed behavior reveals intent. This assumption collapses when the user is an AI agent privately configured by a human operator. For any action an agent takes, a…

We propose an incentive mechanism for the sponsored content provider market in which the communication of users can be represented by a graph and the private information of the users is assumed to have a continuous distribution function.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-27 Mina Montazeri , Pegah Rokhforoz , Hamed Kebriaei , Olga Fink

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-27 Paul Duetting , Michal Feldman , Tomasz Ponitka , Ermis Soumalias

We study a ubiquitous learning challenge in online principal-agent problems during which the principal learns the agent's private information from the agent's revealed preferences in historical interactions. This paradigm includes important…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-01 Minbiao Han , Michael Albert , Haifeng Xu

Cloud computing allows subscription based access to computing. It also allows storage services over Internet. Automated Negotiation is becoming an emerging, and important area in the field of Multi Agent Systems in ECommerce. Multi Agent…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2013-11-26 Amruta More , Sheetal Vij , Debajyoti Mukhopadhyay

In this paper, we study the problem of deceptive reinforcement learning to preserve the privacy of a reward function. Reinforcement learning is the problem of finding a behaviour policy based on rewards received from exploratory behaviour.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-08 Zhengshang Liu , Yue Yang , Tim Miller , Peta Masters

We study a dynamic contracting problem with multiple agents and limited commitment. A principal seeks to screen efficient agents using one-period contracts, but is tempted to revise contract terms upon knowing an agent's type. Alterations…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-03-24 Mehmet Ekmekci , Lucas Maestri , Dong Wei

We consider the multi-agent reinforcement learning setting with imperfect information in which each agent is trying to maximize its own utility. The reward function depends on the hidden state (or goal) of both agents, so the agents must…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-03-28 Roberta Raileanu , Emily Denton , Arthur Szlam , Rob Fergus

Service providers commonly provide only a fixed catalog of services to their clients. Both clients and service providers can benefit from service negotiation, in which a client makes a query for a specific service, and the provider counters…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-07-07 Glenn Bruns , Mauricio Cortes

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

In classical contract theory, we usually impose two assumptions: delegated contracts and perfect commitment. While the second assumption is demanding, the first one suffers no loss of generality. Following this tradition, current…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-09-22 Seungjin Han , Siyang Xiong

We present a simple dynamical model for describing trading interactions between agents in a social network by considering only two dynamical variables, namely money and goods or services, that are assumed conserved over the whole time span…

Physics and Society · Physics 2017-02-01 Rafael A. Barrio , Tzipe Govezensky , Élfego Ruiz-Gutiérrez , Kimmo K. Kaski

From marketing to politics, exploitation of incomplete information through selective communication of arguments is ubiquitous. In this work, we focus on development of an argumentation-theoretic model for manipulable multi-agent…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-09-17 Ryuta Arisaka , Makoto Hagiwara , Takayuki Ito

Orseau and Ring, as well as Dewey, have recently described problems, including self-delusion, with the behavior of agents using various definitions of utility functions. An agent's utility function is defined in terms of the agent's history…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2012-05-15 Bill Hibbard

We consider a dynamic moral hazard problem between a principal and an agent, where the sole instrument the principal has to incentivize the agent is the disclosure of information. The principal aims at maximizing the (discounted) number of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-03-09 Wei Zhao , Claudio Mezzetti , Ludovic Renou , Tristan Tomala

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-09 Matteo Castiglioni , Junjie Chen