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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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Federico Cacciamani , Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

Combinatorial contracts are emerging as a key paradigm in algorithmic contract design, paralleling the role of combinatorial auctions in algorithmic mechanism design. In this paper we study natural combinatorial contract settings involving…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-15 Paul Duetting , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Thomas Kesselheim

We study an online learning version of the generalized principal-agent model, where a principal interacts repeatedly with a strategic agent possessing private types, private rewards, and taking unobservable actions. The agent is non-myopic,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Yuchen Wu , Xinyi Zhong , Zhuoran Yang

We study incentive design when multiple principals simultaneously design mechanisms for their respective teams in environments with strategic spillovers. In this environment, each principal's set of incentive-compatible mechanisms--those…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-11 Brian Roberson

We show that in delegation problems, a principal benefits from belief misalignment vis-\`a-vis an agent when the latter can flexibly acquire costly information. The agent optimally succumbs to confirmatory learning, leading him to favor the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-07-30 Pavel Ilinov , Andrei Matveenko , Maxim Senkov , Egor Starkov

We consider the mechanism design problem of a principal allocating a single good to one of several agents without monetary transfers. Each agent desires the good and uses it to create value for the principal. We designate this value as the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-06-26 Halil İbrahim Bayrak , Çağıl Koçyiğit , Daniel Kuhn , Mustafa Çelebi Pınar

A principal must decide between two options. Which one she prefers depends on the private information of two agents. One agent always prefers the first option; the other always prefers the second. Transfers are infeasible. One application…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-05-24 Deniz Kattwinkel , Axel Niemeyer , Justus Preusser , Alexander Winter

In this paper we provide an alternative framework to tackle the first-best Principal-Agent problem under CARA utilities. This framework leads to both a proof of existence and uniqueness of the solution to the Risk-Sharing problem under very…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2019-12-18 Jessica Martin , Anthony Réveillac

A group of agents each exert effort to produce a joint output, with the complementarities between their efforts represented by a (weighted) network. Under equity compensation, a principal motivates the agents to work by giving them shares…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-08-29 Krishna Dasaratha , Benjamin Golub , Anant Shah

In this paper we study a generalization of the continuous time Principal-Agent problem allowing for time inconsistent utility functions, for instance of mean-variance type. Using recent results on the Pontryagin maximum principle for FBSDEs…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-03-19 Boualem Djehiche , Peter Helgesson

We examine the trade-off between the provision of incentives to exert costly effort (ex-ante moral hazard) and the incentives needed to prevent the agent from manipulating the profit observed by the principal (ex-post moral hazard).…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-12-14 Jean-Gabriel Lauzier

We study how to optimally design selection mechanisms, accounting for agents' investment incentives. A principal wishes to allocate a resource of homogeneous quality to a heterogeneous population of agents. The principal commits to a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-11-11 Victor Augias , Eduardo Perez-Richet

We introduce a class of robust control problems formulated in min-max form, in which the principal agent is viewed as a central planner facing Nature. The agent's cost is a nonlinear function of all its possible realizations, encompassing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-24 François Delarue , Pierre Lavigne

We investigate the optimal regulation of energy production in alignment with the long-term goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. We analyze the optimal regulatory incentives to foster the development of non-emissive electricity generation…

General Economics · Economics 2025-02-11 René Aïd , Annika Kemper , Nizar Touzi

We study a multi-agent contracting problem where agents exert costly effort to achieve individually observable binary outcomes. While the principal can theoretically extract the full social welfare using a discriminatory contract that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-13 Johannes Brustle , Paul Duetting , Stefano Leonardi , Tomasz Ponitka , Matteo Russo

Complex scheduling problems require a large amount computation power and innovative solution methods. The objective of this paper is the conception and implementation of a multi-agent system that is applicable in various problem domains.…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-04-21 Peter Hillmann , Tobias Uhlig , Gabi Dreo Rodosek , Oliver Rose

Algorithmic contract design studies scenarios where a principal incentivizes an agent to exert effort on her behalf. In this work, we focus on settings where the agent's type is drawn from an unknown distribution, and formalize an offline…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-27 Paul Duetting , Michal Feldman , Tomasz Ponitka , Ermis Soumalias

Environments with fixed adjustment costs such as transaction costs or \lq menu costs\rq$ $ are widespread within economic systems. The presence of fixed minimal adjustment costs produces adjustment stickiness so that agents must choose a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-10-09 David Mguni

A large fraction of total healthcare expenditure occurs due to end-of-life (EOL) care, which means it is important to study the problem of more carefully incentivizing necessary versus unnecessary EOL care because this has the potential to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-25 Muyan Jiang , Ying Chen , Xin Chen , Javad Lavaei , Anil Aswani

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