Related papers: Contract Design Beyond Hidden-Actions
The hidden-action model captures a fundamental problem of principal-agent theory and provides an optimal sharing rule when only the outcome but not the effort can be observed. However, the hidden-action model builds on various explicit and…
This paper examines the optimal contracts in a two-dimensional screening model where one dimension(group identity) is verifiable by agents but not falsifiable. A principal offers contracts to agents who differ in cost types and group…
A principal contracts with an agent who sequentially searches over projects to generate a prize. The principal initially knows only one of the agent's available projects and evaluates a contract by its worst-case performance. We…
We study a bilevel \emph{max-max} optimization framework for principal-agent contract design, in which a principal chooses incentives to maximize utility while anticipating the agent's best response. This problem, central to moral hazard…
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…
We study the fundamental problem of designing contracts in principal-agent problems under uncertainty. Previous works mostly addressed Bayesian settings in which principal's uncertainty is modeled as a probability distribution over agent's…
The hidden-action model provides an optimal sharing rule for situations in which a principal assigns a task to an agent who makes an effort to carry out the task assigned to him. However, the principal can only observe the task outcome but…
We study the hidden-action principal-agent problem in an online setting. In each round, the principal posts a contract that specifies the payment to the agent based on each outcome. The agent then makes a strategic choice of action that…
This paper explores the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to autonomously design incentive-compatible contracts in dual-principal-agent settings, a relatively unexplored aspect of algorithmic mechanism design. We develop a…
This paper explores the economic interactions within modern crowdsourcing markets. In these markets, employers issue requests for tasks, platforms facilitate the recruitment of crowd workers, and workers complete tasks for monetary rewards.…
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…
In this paper, we consider a general distributed system with multiple agents who select and then implement actions in the system. The system has an operator with a centralized objective. The agents, on the other hand, are selfinterested and…
A principal provides nondiscriminatory incentives for independent and identical agents. The principal cannot observe the agents' actions, nor does she know the entire set of actions available to them. It is shown, very generally, that any…
A principal selects a team of agents for collaborating on a joint project. The principal aims to design a revenue-optimal contract that incentivize the team of agents to exert costly effort while satisfying fairness constraints. We show…
A principal uses payments conditioned on stochastic outcomes of a team project to elicit costly effort from the team members. We develop a multi-agent generalization of a classic first-order approach to contract optimization by leveraging…
A principal contracts with an agent through an informed delegate. Although the principal cannot directly mediate the interaction, she can restrict the menus of contracts the delegate may offer. We characterize the outcomes implementable…
We analyze a two-period principal-agent model in which the principal faces a budget constraint, and the agent's private costs of performing tasks across the two periods may be correlated. We examine the optimal design of the reward scheme…
We introduce and study a computational version of the principal-agent problem -- a classic problem in Economics that arises when a principal desires to contract an agent to carry out some task, but has incomplete information about the agent…
We study a Bayesian contract design problem in which a principal interacts with an unknown agent. We consider the single-parameter uncertainty model introduced by Alon et al. [2021], in which the agent's type is described by a single…
In the principal-agent problem formulated by Myerson'82, agents have private information (type) and make private decisions (action), both of which are unobservable to the principal. Myerson pointed out an elegant linear programming solution…