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A rich class of mechanism design problems can be understood as incomplete-information games between a principal who commits to a policy and an agent who responds, with payoffs determined by an unknown state of the world. Traditionally,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2020-09-14 Modibo Camara , Jason Hartline , Aleck Johnsen

We study how to allocate resources to participants who can strategically misrepresent their deservingness at a cost. A principal assigns item(s) (or money) among multiple agents on the basis of their costly signals. Each agent's signal…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-03-05 Yingkai Li , Xiaoyun Qiu

Explainable systems expose information about why certain observed effects are happening to the agents interacting with them. We argue that this constitutes a positive flow of information that needs to be specified, verified, and balanced…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-09-24 Bernd Finkbeiner , Hadar Frenkel , Julian Siber

Modelling other agents' behaviors plays an important role in decision models for interactions among multiple agents. To optimise its own decisions, a subject agent needs to model what other agents act simultaneously in an uncertain…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Yinghui Pan , Hanyi Zhang , Yifeng Zeng , Biyang Ma , Jing Tang , Zhong Ming

We investigate a two-period Bayesian persuasion game, where the receiver faces a decision, akin to a one-armed bandit problem: to undertake an action, gaining noisy information and a corresponding positive or negative payoff, or to refrain.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-01-11 Massimo DAntoni , Ehud Lehrer , Avraham Tabbach , Eilon Solan

We initiate the study of a repeated principal-agent problem over a finite horizon $T$, where a principal sequentially interacts with $K\geq 2$ types of agents arriving in an adversarial order. At each round, the principal strategically…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-05 Junyan Liu , Arnab Maiti , Artin Tajdini , Kevin Jamieson , Lillian J. Ratliff

We consider a setting where in a known future time, a certain continuous random variable will be realized. There is a public prediction that gradually converges to its realized value, and an expert that has access to a more accurate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-05-25 Amir Ban , Yossi Azar , Yishay Mansour

Is transparency always beneficial in complex systems such as traffic networks and stock markets? How is transparency defined in multi-agent systems, and what is its optimal degree at which social welfare is highest? We take an agent-based…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-01-12 Kshama Dwarakanath , Svitlana Vyetrenko , Toks Oyebode , Tucker Balch

We study a dynamic stopping game between a principal and an agent. The agent is privately informed about his type. The principal learns about the agent's type from a noisy performance measure, which can be manipulated by the agent via a…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-08-03 Mehmet Ekmekci , Leandro Gorno , Lucas Maestri , Jian Sun , Dong Wei

We consider a principal agent project selection problem with asymmetric information. There are $N$ projects and the principal must select exactly one of them. Each project provides some profit to the principal and some payoff to the agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-04-15 Sumit Goel , Wade Hann-Caruthers

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

We study the impact of disinformation on a model of resource allocation with independent selfish agents: clients send requests to one of two servers, depending on which one is perceived as offering shorter waiting times. Delays in the…

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks · Physics 2007-05-23 Richard Metzler , Mark Klein , Yaneer Bar-Yam

Goods and services -- public housing, medical appointments, schools -- are often allocated to individuals who rank them similarly but differ in their preference intensities. We characterize optimal allocation rules when individual…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-08-30 Pietro Ortoleva , Evgenii Safonov , Leeat Yariv

We study a variant of the principal-agent problem in which the principal does not directly observe the agent's effort outcome; rather, she gets a signal about the agent's action according to a variable information structure designed by a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Yakov Babichenko , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Haifeng Xu , Konstantin Zabarnyi

According to Yuval Noah Harari, large-scale human cooperation is driven by shared narratives that encode common beliefs and values. This study explores whether such narratives can similarly nudge LLM agents toward collaboration. We use a…

In-group favoritism refers to the phenomena of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members and is widely observed in numerous social cooperative behaviors. Recently, in-group favoritism biases have also been identified in…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Shijun Lei , Hongyu Wang , Yunji Liang , Haowen Zheng , Bin Guo , Zhiwen Yu

How should an AI-based explanation system explain an agent's complex behavior to ordinary end users who have no background in AI? Answering this question is an active research area, for if an AI-based explanation system could effectively…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2017-11-21 Jonathan Dodge , Sean Penney , Claudia Hilderbrand , Andrew Anderson , Margaret Burnett

We explore the deliberate infusion of ambiguity into the design of contracts. We show that when the agent is ambiguity-averse and hence chooses an action that maximizes their minimum utility, the principal can strictly gain from using an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-17 Paul Dütting , Michal Feldman , Daniel Peretz , Larry Samuelson

Conflicts between user preferences and automated system behavior already shape the experience of automated mobility. For example, a passenger may prefer assertive driving, yet the vehicle slows down early to follow a conservative policy or…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Pascal Jansen

We study the algorithmic problem faced by an information holder (seller) who wants to optimally sell such information to a budged-constrained decision maker (buyer) that has to undertake some action. Differently from previous, we consider…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-02-01 Matteo Castiglioni , Francesco Bacchiocchi , Alberto Marchesi , Giulia Romano , Nicola Gatti