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In this paper, we consider a problem of contract theory in which several Principals hire a common Agent and we study the model in the continuous time setting. We show that optimal contracts should satisfy some equilibrium conditions and we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-01-15 Thibaut Mastrolia , Zhenjie Ren

We study principal-agent problems where a farsighted agent takes costly actions in an MDP. The core challenge in these settings is that agent's actions are hidden to the principal, who can only observe their outcomes, namely state…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-18 Matteo Bollini , Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-02-01 Andreas Haupt , Zoe Hitzig

Economic theory distinguishes between principal-agent settings in which the agent has a private type and settings in which the agent takes a hidden action. Many practical problems, however, involve aspects of both. For example, brand X may…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-11-24 Tal Alon , Paul Dütting , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-18 David Hyland , Julian Gutierrez , Michael Wooldridge

We study the incentivized information acquisition problem, where a principal hires an agent to gather information on her behalf. Such a problem is modeled as a Stackelberg game between the principal and the agent, where the principal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-08 Siyu Chen , Jibang Wu , Yifan Wu , Zhuoran Yang

Collaborative machine learning (CML) provides a promising paradigm for democratizing advanced technologies by enabling cost-sharing among participants. However, the potential for rent-seeking behaviors among parties can undermine such…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-03 Bingchen Wang , Zhaoxuan Wu , Fusheng Liu , Bryan Kian Hsiang Low

The increasing deployment of AI is shaping the future landscape of the internet, which is set to become an integrated ecosystem of AI agents. Orchestrating the interaction among AI agents necessitates decentralized, self-sustaining…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-08 Dima Ivanov , Paul Dütting , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Tonghan Wang , David C. Parkes

Motivated by the success of the serial dictatorship mechanism in social choice settings, we explore its usefulness in tackling various combinatorial optimization problems. We do so by considering an abstract model, in which a set of agents…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-09 Ioannis Caragiannis , Nidhi Rathi

We present a new type of monotone submodular functions: \emph{multi-peak submodular functions}. Roughly speaking, given a family of sets $\cF$, we construct a monotone submodular function $f$ with a high value $f(S)$ for every set $S \in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-03-20 Shahar Dobzinski , Jan Vondrak

To strengthen data privacy and security, federated learning as an emerging machine learning technique is proposed to enable large-scale nodes, e.g., mobile devices, to distributedly train and globally share models without revealing their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-25 Jiawen Kang , Zehui Xiong , Dusit Niyato , Han Yu , Ying-Chang Liang , Dong In Kim

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-06-14 Qian Qi

We study a setting in which a principal selects an agent to execute a collection of tasks according to a specified priority sequence. Agents, however, have their own individual priority sequences according to which they wish to execute the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-30 Donya G. Dobakhshari , Lav R. Varshney , Vijay Gupta

Constrained maximization of submodular functions poses a central problem in combinatorial optimization. In many realistic scenarios, a number of agents need to maximize multiple submodular objectives over the same ground set. We study such…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-07-22 Georgios Amanatidis , Georgios Birmpas , Philip Lazos , Stefano Leonardi , Rebecca Reiffenhäuser

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.…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-08-26 Andreas Kleiner

We study the communication complexity of dominant strategy implementations of combinatorial auctions. We start with two domains that are generally considered "easy": multi-unit auctions with decreasing marginal values and combinatorial…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-02 Shahar Dobzinski , Shiri Ron , Jan Vondrák

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

Ranking is fundamental to many areas, such as search engine optimization, human feedback for language models, as well as peer grading. Crowdsourcing, which is often used for these tasks, requires proper incentivization to ensure accurate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-26 Kiriaki Frangias , Andrew Lin , Ellen Vitercik , Manolis Zampetakis

Federated learning (FL) serves as a data privacy-preserved machine learning paradigm, and realizes the collaborative model trained by distributed clients. To accomplish an FL task, the task publisher needs to pay financial incentives to the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-08-13 Mengmeng Tian , Yuxin Chen , Yuan Liu , Zehui Xiong , Cyril Leung , Chunyan Miao

We present a continuous-time contract whereby a top-level player can incentivize a hierarchy of players below him to act in his best interest despite only observing the output of his direct subordinate. This paper extends Sannikov's…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-11-25 Christopher W. Miller , Insoon Yang