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Related papers: Designing Exploration Contracts

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In this paper we show how the relaxation techniques can be used to establish the existence of an optimal contract in presence of information asymmetry. The method we illustrate was initially motivated by the problem of designing optimal…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2023-07-17 Guillermo Alonso Alvarez , Sergey Nadtochiy

We propose a new principal-agent framework where a principal communicates a roadmap -- a set of plausible outcome models and a prior belief over them -- to guide an agent who is learning the value of innovation. The agent trusts the prior…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-02-24 Florian Mudekereza

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-21 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Andrea Celli

We consider a hidden-action principal-agent model, in which actions require different amounts of effort, and the agent privately knows his ability that determines his cost of effort. We show that linear contracts admit approximation…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Tal Alon , Paul Dütting , Yingkai Li , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

This paper studies continuous-time optimal contracting in a hierarchy problem which generalises the model of Sung (2015). The hierarchy is modeled by a series of interlinked principal-agent problems, leading to a sequence of Stackelberg…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-22 Emma Hubert

The rapid advancement of AI and other emerging technologies has triggered exponential growth in computing resources demand. Faced with prohibitive infrastructure costs for large-scale computing clusters, users are increasingly resorting to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Zhengyan Deng , Yusen Zheng , Chenliang Sheng , Shaowen Qin

We explore the deliberate infusion of ambiguity into the design of contracts. We show that when the agent is ambiguity-averse and hence chooses an action that maximizes their minimum utility, the principal can strictly gain from using an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-17 Paul Dütting , Michal Feldman , Daniel Peretz , Larry Samuelson

We study the problem of demand response contracts in electricity markets by quantifying the impact of considering a mean-field of consumers, whose consumption is impacted by a common noise. We formulate the problem as a Principal-Agent…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-03-25 Romuald Elie , Emma Hubert , Thibaut Mastrolia , Dylan Possamaï

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

How does competition in markets for information affect the creation and division of surplus? We study this question in a search environment in which an agent searches sequentially for a high-quality good and learns about the quality of…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-26 Teddy Mekonnen , Bobak Pakzad-Hurson

In this work, we introduce and study contextual search in general principal-agent games, where a principal repeatedly interacts with agents by offering contracts based on contextual information and historical feedback, without knowing the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Yiding Feng , Mengfan Ma , Bo Peng , Zongqi Wan

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-01-15 Donya Ghavidel , Pratyush Chakraborty , Enrique Baeyens , Vijay Gupta , Pramod P. Khargonekar

We study Bayesian automated mechanism design in unstructured dynamic environments, where a principal repeatedly interacts with an agent, and takes actions based on the strategic agent's report of the current state of the world. Both the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-05-14 Hanrui Zhang , Vincent Conitzer

We study two combinatorial contract design models -- multi-agent and multi-action -- where a principal delegates the execution of a costly project to others. In both settings, the principal cannot observe the choices of the agent(s), only…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-12-01 Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Maya Schlesinger

We consider the problem of Adverse Selection and optimal derivative design within a Principal-Agent framework. The principal's income is exposed to non-hedgeable risk factors arising, for instance, from weather or climate phenomena. She…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2007-10-31 U. Horst , S. Moreno

How to incentivize self-interested agents to explore when they prefer to exploit? Consider a population of self-interested agents that make decisions under uncertainty. They "explore" to acquire new information and "exploit" this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Aleksandrs Slivkins

This paper analyzes optimal insurance design when the insurer internalizes the effect of coverage on third-party service prices. A monopolistic insurer contracts with risk-averse agents who have sequential two-dimensional private…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-10-03 Andrea Di Giovan Paolo , Jose Higueras

We study the repeated principal-agent bandit game, where the principal indirectly interacts with the unknown environment by proposing incentives for the agent to play arms. Most existing work assumes the agent has full knowledge of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Junyan Liu , Lillian J. Ratliff

We consider the information design problem in spatial resource competition settings. Agents gather at a location deciding whether to move to another location for possibly higher level of resources, and the utility each agent gets by moving…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-09-30 Pu Yang , Krishnamurthy Iyer , Peter Frazier

Martin Weitzman's "Pandora's problem" furnishes the mathematical basis for optimal search theory in economics. Nearly 40 years later, Laura Doval introduced a version of the problem in which the searcher is not obligated to pay the cost of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-05-07 Hedyeh Beyhaghi , Robert Kleinberg