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We study a novel class of mechanism design problems in which the outcomes are constrained by the payments. This basic class of mechanism design problems captures many common economic situations, and yet it has not been studied, to our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-12-02 Yaron Singer

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

We analyze the optimal delegation problem between a principal and an agent, assuming that the latter has state-independent preferences. We demonstrate that if the principal is more risk-averse than the agent toward non-status quo options,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-09-19 Xiaoxiao Hu , Haoran Lei

This paper studies the optimal investment problem with random endowment in an inventory-based price impact model with competitive market makers. Our goal is to analyze how price impact affects optimal policies, as well as both pricing rules…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2018-12-10 Michail Anthropelos , Scott Robertson , Konstantinos Spiliopoulos

This paper considers the hidden-action model of the principal-agent problem, in which a principal incentivizes an agent to work on a project using a contract. We investigate whether contracts with bounded payments are learnable and…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-23 Yurong Chen , Zhaohua Chen , Xiaotie Deng , Zhiyi Huang

I study the optimal design of ratings to motivate agent investment in quality when transfers are unavailable. The principal designs a rating scheme that maps the agent's quality to a (possibly stochastic) score. The agent has private…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-08-11 Peiran Xiao

We consider budget feasible mechanisms for procurement auctions with additive valuation functions. For the divisible case, where agents can be allocated fractionally, there exists an optimal mechanism with approximation guarantee $e/(e-1)$…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-02 Sophie Klumper , Guido Schäfer

We propose to study electricity capacity remuneration mechanism design through a Principal-Agent approach. The Principal represents the aggregation of electricity consumers (or a representative entity), subject to the physical risk of…

General Economics · Economics 2020-09-02 Clémence Alasseur , Heythem Farhat , Marcelo Saguan

We analyze a nonlinear pricing model where the seller controls both product pricing (screening) and buyer information about their own values (persuasion). We prove that the optimal mechanism always consists of finitely many signals and…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-03-11 Dirk Bergemann , Tibor Heumann , Stephen Morris

This work considers a repeated principal-agent bandit game, where the principal can only interact with her environment through the agent. The principal and the agent have misaligned objectives and the choice of action is only left to the…

In this paper, we consider the problem of a Principal aiming at designing a reward function for a population of heterogeneous agents. We construct an incentive based on the ranking of the agents, so that a competition among the latter is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Clémence Alasseur , Erhan Bayraktar , Roxana Dumitrescu , Quentin Jacquet

Standard procurement models assume that the buyer knows the quality of the good at the time of procurement; however, in many settings, the quality is learned only long after the transaction. We study procurement problems in which the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-03 Kun Zhang

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-22 João Thereze , Udayan Vaidya

Models of economic decision makers often include idealized assumptions, such as rationality, perfect foresight, and access to all relevant pieces of information. These assumptions often assure the models' internal validity, but, at the same…

General Economics · Economics 2021-07-09 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

In principal-agent models, a principal offers a contract to an agent to perform a certain task. The agent exerts a level of effort that maximizes her utility. The principal is oblivious to the agent's chosen level of effort, and conditions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Alon Cohen , Moran Koren , Argyrios Deligkas

When deploying artificial agents in real-world environments where they interact with humans, it is crucial that their behavior is aligned with the values, social norms or other requirements of that environment. However, many environments…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-05 Mattijs Baert , Pietro Mazzaglia , Sam Leroux , Pieter Simoens

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-03-13 Krishna Dasaratha , Benjamin Golub , Anant Shah

In this paper, we consider the revealed preferences problem from a learning perspective. Every day, a price vector and a budget is drawn from an unknown distribution, and a rational agent buys his most preferred bundle according to some…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-11-20 Morteza Zadimoghaddam , Aaron Roth

A monopolist wishes to maximize her profits by finding an optimal price policy. After she announces a menu of products and prices, each agent $x$ will choose to buy that product $y(x)$ which maximizes his own utility, if positive. The…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-02-12 Robert J. McCann , Kelvin Shuangjian Zhang

In the private values single object auction model, we construct a satisfactory mechanism - a symmetric, dominant strategy incentive compatible, and budget-balanced mechanism. Our mechanism allocates the object to the highest valued agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-10-04 Debasis Mishra , Tridib Sharma