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Related papers: Incentive Design with Spillovers

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We introduce a mean field game with rank-based reward: competing agents optimize their effort to achieve a goal, are ranked according to their completion time, and paid a reward based on their relative rank. First, we propose a tractable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-08-07 Marcel Nutz , Yuchong Zhang

In this work we investigate the inefficiency of the electricity system with strategic agents. Specifically, we prove that without a proper control the total demand of an inefficient system is at most twice the total demand of the optimal…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2015-09-10 Carlos Barreto , Eduardo Mojica-Nava , Nicanor Quijano

The application of incentives, such as reward and punishment, is a frequently applied way for promoting cooperation among interacting individuals in structured populations. However, how to properly use the incentives is still a challenging…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-04-24 Shengxian Wang , Xiaojie Chen , Zhilong Xiao , Attila Szolnoki , Vítor V. Vasconcelos

Incentive design problems consider a system planner who steers self-interested agents toward a socially optimal Nash equilibrium by issuing incentives in the presence of information asymmetry, that is, uncertainty about the agents' cost…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-04-14 Georgios Vasileiou , Lantian Zhang , Silun Zhang

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

This paper introduces a model of a stylized organization that is comprised of several departments that autonomously allocate tasks. To do so, the departments either take short-sighted decisions that immediately maximize their utility or…

General Economics · Economics 2021-05-12 Stephan Leitner

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

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

Critical sectors of human society are progressing toward the adoption of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) agents, which are trained individually on behalf of self-interested principals but deployed in a shared environment. Short of…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-12-22 Jiachen Yang , Ethan Wang , Rakshit Trivedi , Tuo Zhao , Hongyuan Zha

Social dilemmas present a significant challenge in multi-agent cooperation because individuals are incentivised to behave in ways that undermine socially optimal outcomes. Consequently, self-interested agents often avoid collective…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-08-02 Richard Willis , Yali Du , Joel Z Leibo , Michael Luck

Game theory serves as a powerful tool for distributed optimization in multi-agent systems in different applications. In this paper we consider multi-agent systems that can be modeled by means of potential games whose potential function…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-04-13 Tatiana Tatarenko

To regulate a social system comprised of self-interested agents, economic incentives are often required to induce a desirable outcome. This incentive design problem naturally possesses a bilevel structure, in which a designer modifies the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-10-14 Boyi Liu , Jiayang Li , Zhuoran Yang , Hoi-To Wai , Mingyi Hong , Yu Marco Nie , Zhaoran Wang

Many real-world systems such as taxi systems, traffic networks and smart grids involve self-interested actors that perform individual tasks in a shared environment. However, in such systems, the self-interested behaviour of agents produces…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2019-01-31 David Mguni , Joel Jennings , Sergio Valcarcel Macua , Emilio Sison , Sofia Ceppi , Enrique Munoz de Cote

In competitive resource allocation, a central coordinator may seek to gain an advantage not by directly controlling subordinate agents, but by strategically manipulating the information they receive. We study this problem within the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Gilberto Diaz-Garcia , Keith Paarporn , Jason R. Marden

This paper studies continuous-time optimal contracting in a hierarchy problem which generalises the model of Sung (2015). The hierarchy is modeled by a series of interlinked principal-agent problems, leading to a sequence of Stackelberg…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-22 Emma Hubert

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

When machine learning is outsourced to a rational agent, conflicts of interest might arise and severely impact predictive performance. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework for incentive-aware delegation of machine learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-07 Eden Saig , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Nir Rosenfeld

We consider the robust contract design problem when the principal only has limited information about the actions the agent can take. The principal evaluates a contract according to its worst-case performance caused by the uncertain action…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-06-18 Bo Peng , Zhihao Gavin Tang

A principal contracts with an agent who sequentially searches over projects to generate a prize. The principal initially knows only one of the agent's available projects and evaluates a contract by its worst-case performance. We…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-17 Théo Durandard , Udayan Vaidya , Boli Xu

We study multi-agent contracts, in which a principal delegates a task to multiple agents and incentivizes them to exert effort. Prior research has mostly focused on maximizing the principal's utility, often resulting in highly disparate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-26 Ke Ding , Bo Li , Ankang Sun