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Many real-life contractual relations differ completely from the clean, static model at the heart of principal-agent theory. Typically, they involve repeated strategic interactions of the principal and agent, taking place under uncertainty…

We study principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme -- called contract -- in order to induce an agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. We consider a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

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

We study a Markov matching market involving a planner and a set of strategic agents on the two sides of the market. At each step, the agents are presented with a dynamical context, where the contexts determine the utilities. The planner…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-09 Yifei Min , Tianhao Wang , Ruitu Xu , Zhaoran Wang , Michael I. Jordan , Zhuoran Yang

Reinforcement learning algorithms describe how an agent can learn an optimal action policy in a sequential decision process, through repeated experience. In a given environment, the agent policy provides him some running and terminal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-03-24 Arthur Charpentier , Romuald Elie , Carl Remlinger

We investigate the mechanism design problem faced by a principal who hires \emph{multiple} agents to gather and report costly information. Then, the principal exploits the information to make an informed decision. We model this problem as a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Federico Cacciamani , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

This paper surveys the field of reinforcement learning from a computer-science perspective. It is written to be accessible to researchers familiar with machine learning. Both the historical basis of the field and a broad selection of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2014-11-17 L. P. Kaelbling , M. L. Littman , A. W. Moore

Principal-agent problems model scenarios where a principal incentivizes an agent to take costly, unobservable actions through the provision of payments. Such problems are ubiquitous in several real-world applications, ranging from…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-27 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Jiarui Gan , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

Contract theory studies how a principal can incentivize agents to exert costly, unobservable effort through performance-based payments. While classical economic models provide elegant characterizations of optimal solutions, modern…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Michal Feldman

Advances in reinforcement learning research have demonstrated the ways in which different agent-based models can learn how to optimally perform a task within a given environment. Reinforcement leaning solves unsupervised problems where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-03 Herkulaas Combrink , Vukosi Marivate , Benjamin Rosman

A contract is an economic tool used by a principal to incentivize one or more agents to exert effort on her behalf, by defining payments based on observable performance measures. A key challenge addressed by contracts -- known in economics…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Paul Duetting , Michal Feldman , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) is a powerful tool for training autonomous agents acting independently in a common environment. However, it can lead to sub-optimal behavior when individual incentives and group incentives diverge.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-01-30 Andreas A. Haupt , Phillip J. K. Christoffersen , Mehul Damani , Dylan Hadfield-Menell

In the classical principal-agent problem, a principal must design a contract to incentivize an agent to perform an action on behalf of the principal. We study the classical principal-agent problem in a setting where the agent can be of one…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-10-15 Guru Guruganesh , Jon Schneider , Joshua Wang

We study the hidden-action principal-agent problem in an online setting. In each round, the principal posts a contract that specifies the payment to the agent based on each outcome. The agent then makes a strategic choice of action that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Banghua Zhu , Stephen Bates , Zhuoran Yang , Yixin Wang , Jiantao Jiao , Michael I. Jordan

Reinforcement learning is commonly concerned with problems of maximizing accumulated rewards in Markov decision processes. Oftentimes, a certain goal state or a subset of the state space attain maximal reward. In such a case, the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-08-23 Pavel Osinenko , Grigory Yaremenko , Georgiy Malaniya , Anton Bolychev , Alexander Gepperth

We study an online linear classification problem, in which the data is generated by strategic agents who manipulate their features in an effort to change the classification outcome. In rounds, the learner deploys a classifier, and an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-10-24 Jinshuo Dong , Aaron Roth , Zachary Schutzman , Bo Waggoner , Zhiwei Steven Wu

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

Online learning algorithms are widely used in strategic multi-agent settings, including repeated auctions, contract design, and pricing competitions, where agents adapt their strategies over time. A key question in such environments is how…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-07 Angelos Assos , Yuval Dagan , Nived Rajaraman

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

Although Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found tremendous success in simulated domains, they often cannot directly be applied to physical systems, especially in cases where there are hard constraints to satisfy (e.g. on safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-08-28 Harsh Satija , Philip Amortila , Joelle Pineau
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