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We study multi-agent contracts, in which a principal delegates a task to multiple agents and incentivizes them to exert effort. Prior research has mostly focused on maximizing the principal's utility, often resulting in highly disparate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-26 Ke Ding , Bo Li , Ankang Sun

This paper presents our methodology to simulate the behavior of the DeLend Platform. Such simulations are important to verify if the system is able to connect the different sets of agents linked to the platform in a functional manner. They…

Computational Finance · Quantitative Finance 2023-04-04 Frederico Dutilh Novaes , Gabriel de Abreu Madeira , Aurimar Cerqueira

We study a multi-agent contracting problem where agents exert costly effort to achieve individually observable binary outcomes. While the principal can theoretically extract the full social welfare using a discriminatory contract that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Johannes Brustle , Paul Duetting , Stefano Leonardi , Tomasz Ponitka , Matteo Russo

Is transparency always beneficial in complex systems such as traffic networks and stock markets? How is transparency defined in multi-agent systems, and what is its optimal degree at which social welfare is highest? We take an agent-based…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-01-12 Kshama Dwarakanath , Svitlana Vyetrenko , Toks Oyebode , Tucker Balch

Distributed function computation is the problem, for a networked system of $n$ autonomous agents, to collectively compute the value $f(v_1, \ldots, v_n)$ of some input values, each initially private to one agent in the network. Here, we…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-11-30 Bernadette Charron-Bost , Patrick Lambein-Monette

This paper studies optimal mechanisms for collecting and trading data. Consumers benefit from revealing information about their tastes to a service provider because this improves the service. However, the information is also valuable to a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-29 Jiadong Gu

We study a multi-agent contract design problem with moral hazard. In our model, each agent exerts costly effort towards an individual task at which it may either succeed or fail, and the principal, who wishes to encourage effort, has an…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-09 Sumit Goel , Wade Hann-Caruthers

The design of punishment policies applied to specific domains linking agents actions to material penalties is an open research issue. The proposed framework applies principles of contract law to set penalties: expectation damages,…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2013-04-23 Adrian Groza

We study a simple problem of allocating common-value goods. The designer seeks to allocate the goods to as many unit-demand agents as possible without monetary transfers, while agents, who possess partial private information about the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-22 Hiroto Sato , Ryo Shirakawa

We consider a counter-adversarial sequential decision-making problem where an agent computes its private belief (posterior distribution) of the current state of the world, by filtering private information. According to its private belief,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-04-09 Inês Lourenço , Robert Mattila , Cristian R. Rojas , Bo Wahlberg

We consider a principal-agent problem where the agent may privately choose to acquire relevant information prior to taking a hidden action. This model generalizes two special cases: a classic moral hazard setting, and a more recently…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-13 Maneesha Papireddygari , Bo Waggoner

We consider the principal-agent problem with heterogeneous agents. Previous works assume that the principal signs independent incentive contracts with every agent to make them invest more efforts on the tasks. However, in many…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2019-11-12 Shenke Xiao , Zihe Wang , Mengjing Chen , Pingzhong Tang , Xiwang Yang

Much research in artificial intelligence is concerned with the development of autonomous agents that can interact effectively with other agents. An important aspect of such agents is the ability to reason about the behaviours of other…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2018-02-12 Stefano V. Albrecht , Peter Stone

In this work, we study sequential contracts under matroid constraints. In the sequential setting, an agent can take actions one by one. After each action, the agent observes the stochastic value of the action and then decides which action…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Kanstantsin Pashkovich , Jacob Skitsko , Yun Xing

We study a principal-agent team production model. The principal hires a team of agents to participate in a common production task. The exact effort of each agent is unobservable and unverifiable, but the total production outcome (e.g. the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Shiliang Zuo

The data sponsored scheme allows the content provider to cover parts of the cellular data costs for mobile users. Thus the content service becomes appealing to more users and potentially generates more profit gain to the content provider.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-11-06 Zehui Xiong , Shaohan Feng , Dusit Niyato , Ping Wang , Yang Zhang

Humans have come to rely on machines for reducing excessive information to manageable representations. But this reliance can be abused -- strategic machines might craft representations that manipulate their users. How can a user make good…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Vineet Nair , Ganesh Ghalme , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Nir Rosenfeld

In many applications, we want to influence the decisions of independent agents by designing incentives for their actions. We revisit a fundamental problem in this area, called GAME IMPLEMENTATION: Given a game in standard form and a set of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-12-02 Jiehua Chen , Sebastian Vincent Haydn , Negar Layegh Khavidaki , Sofia Simola , Manuel Sorge

Contracts are a well-established approach for describing and analyzing behavioral aspects of web service compositions. The theory of contracts comes equipped with a notion of compatibility between clients and servers that ensures that every…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2011-01-26 Maria Grazia Buscemi , Hernán Melgratti

Host-acting agents promise a convenient interaction model in which users specify goals and the system determines how to realize them. We argue that this convenience introduces a distinct security problem: semantic under-specification in…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Di Lu , Yongzhi Liao , Xutong Mu , Lele Zheng , Ke Cheng , Xuewen Dong , Yulong Shen , Jianfeng Ma