Related papers: Contract Design for Sequential Actions
We study hidden-action principal-agent problems with multiple agents. Unlike previous work, we consider a general setting in which each agent has an arbitrary number of actions, and the joint action induces outcomes according to an…
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…
We study a principal-agent problem with adverse selection, where the principal does not know the agent's true cost but must design a contract to optimize a specific criterion. Unlike standard screening frameworks that allow for…
We consider the problem of creating assistants that can help agents solve new sequential decision problems, assuming the agent is not able to specify the reward function explicitly to the assistant. Instead of acting in place of the agent…
We study the problem faced by a service provider that has to sell services to a user. In our model the service provider proposes various payment options (a menu) to the user which may be based, for example, on the quality of the service.…
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…
We consider the design of experiments to evaluate treatments that are administered by self-interested agents, each seeking to achieve the highest evaluation and win the experiment. For example, in an advertising experiment, a company wishes…
We study a model of delegation in which a principal takes a multidimensional action and an agent has private information about a multidimensional state of the world. The principal can design any direct mechanism, including stochastic ones.…
This paper studies contracting in the presence of externalities with a non-contractible outsider. Multiple equilibria arise from strategic symmetry between the insider agent and the outsider. To address strategic uncertainty, the principal…
Our goal is to solve both problems of adverse selection and moral hazard for multi-agent projects. In our model, each selected agent can work according to his private "capability tree". This means a process involving hidden actions, hidden…
A decisionmaker faces $n$ alternatives, each of which represents a potential reward. After investing costly resources into investigating the alternatives, the decisionmaker may select one, or more generally a feasible subset, and obtain the…
On-line firms deploy suites of software platforms, where each platform is designed to interact with users during a certain activity, such as browsing, chatting, socializing, emailing, driving, etc. The economic and incentive structure of…
Contract scheduling is a widely studied framework for designing real-time systems with interruptible capabilities. Previous work has showed that a prediction on the interruption time can help improve the performance of contract-based…
Combinatorial optimization problems involving multiple agents are notoriously challenging due to their NP-hard nature and the necessity for effective agent coordination. Despite advancements in learning-based methods, existing approaches…
This paper studies optimal contract design in private market investing, focusing on internal decision making in venture capital and private equity firms. A principal relies on an agent who privately exerts costly due diligence effort and…
Recent technology advances have enabled firms to flexibly process and analyze sophisticated employee performance data at a reduced and yet significant cost. We develop a theory of optimal incentive contracting where the monitoring…
We study a sequential resource allocation problem where a decision maker selects subsets of agents at each period to maximize overall outcomes without prior knowledge of individual-level effects. Our framework applies to settings such as…
We consider Incentive Decision Processes, where a principal seeks to reduce its costs due to another agent's behavior, by offering incentives to the agent for alternate behavior. We focus on the case where a principal interacts with a…
This paper studies delegation in a model of discrete choice. In the delegation problem, an uninformed principal must consult an informed agent to make a decision. Both the agent and principal have preferences over the decided-upon action…
The Pandora's box problem (Weitzman 1979) is a core model in economic theory that captures an agent's (Pandora's) search for the best alternative (box). We study an important generalization of the problem where the agent can either fully…