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Systems engineering processes coordinate the effort of different individuals to generate a product satisfying certain requirements. As the involved engineers are self-interested agents, the goals at different levels of the systems…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2023-07-19 Salar Safarkhani , Ilias Bilionis , Jitesh Panchal

We investigate the impact of a regulation policy imposed on an agent exploiting a possibly renewable natural resource. We adopt a principal-agent model in which the Principal looks for a contract, i.e. taxes/compensations, leading the Agent…

Probability · Mathematics 2019-06-06 Idris Kharroubi , Thomas Lim , Thibaut Mastrolia

A principal has $m$ identical objects to allocate among a group of $n$ agents. Objects are desirable and the principal's value of assigning an object to an agent is the agent's private information. The principal can verify up to $k$ agents,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-09-04 Albin Erlanson , Andreas Kleiner

In this paper, we study moral hazard problems in contract theory by adding an exogenous Planner to manage the actions of Agents hired by a Principal. We provide conditions ensuring that Pareto optima exist for the Agents using the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-06-06 Thibaut Mastrolia

Consider costly and time-consuming tasks that add up to the success of a project, and must be fitted into a given time-frame. This is an instance of the classic budgeted maximization (knapsack) problem, which admits an FPTAS. Now assume an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Ilan Doron-Arad , Hadas Shachnai , Gilad Shmerler , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Jussi Keppo , Yingkai Li

We study a multi-agent contract design problem with moral hazard. In our model, each agent exerts costly effort towards an individual task at which it may either succeed or fail, and the principal, who wishes to encourage effort, has an…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-09 Sumit Goel , Wade Hann-Caruthers

Incentives are more likely to elicit desired outcomes when they are designed based on accurate models of agents' strategic behavior. A growing literature, however, suggests that people do not quite behave like standard economic agents in a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-06-09 Arpita Ghosh , Robert Kleinberg

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…

General Economics · Economics 2020-04-15 Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

We use the recently developed probabilistic analysis of mean field games with finitely many states in the weak formulation, to set-up a principal / agent contract theory model where the principal faces a large population of agents…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-08-27 Rene Carmona , Peiqi Wang

We study the problem of designing an optimal sequence of incentives that a principal should offer to an agent so that the agent's optimal behavior under the incentives realizes the principal's objective expressed as a temporal logic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-03-20 Yagiz Savas , Vijay Gupta , Melkior Ornik , Lillian J. Ratliff , Ufuk Topcu

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Ali Khodabakhsh , Emmanouil Pountourakis , Samuel Taggart

We consider cooperative multi-agent consensus optimization problems over an undirected network of agents, where only those agents connected by an edge can directly communicate. The objective is to minimize the sum of agent-specific…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-07-12 Necdet Serhat Aybat , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani

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

We study a Bayesian persuasion problem with externalities. In this model, a principal sends signals to inform multiple agents about the state of the world. Simultaneously, due to the existence of externalities in the agents' utilities, the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-18 Jonathan Shaki , Jiarui Gan , Sarit Kraus

Dynamic contracts with multiple agents is a classical decentralized decision-making problem with asymmetric information. In this paper, we extend the single-agent dynamic incentive contract model in continuous-time to a multi-agent scheme…

Econometrics · Economics 2017-10-10 Qi Luo , Romesh Saigal

I study a principal-agent model in which a principal hires an agent to collect information about an unknown continuous state. The agent acquires a signal whose distribution is centered around the state, controlling the signal's precision at…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-05 Fan Wu

We develop a continuous-time principal-agent model of gig work, where contractual flexibility allows the employer to adjust fixed pay and output-based incentives dynamically. The worker's participation depends on a backward-looking…

General Economics · Economics 2025-09-03 Zsolt Bihary , Péter Csóka , Péter Kerényi , Alexander Szimayer

This paper studies the design of optimal proper scoring rules when the principal has partial knowledge of an agent's signal distribution. Recent work characterizes the proper scoring rules that maximize the increase of an agent's payoff…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-10-15 Yiling Chen , Fang-Yi Yu

This paper studies a dynamic screening model in which a principal hires an agent with limited liability. The agent's private cost of working is an i.i.d. draw from a continuous distribution. His working status is publicly observable. The…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-26 Yijun Liu