English
Related papers

Related papers: Incentive Design with Spillovers

200 papers

Coordination is often critical to forming prosocial behaviors -- behaviors that increase the overall sum of rewards received by all agents in a multi-agent game. However, state of the art reinforcement learning algorithms often suffer from…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2021-05-17 Woodrow Z. Wang , Mark Beliaev , Erdem Bıyık , Daniel A. Lazar , Ramtin Pedarsani , Dorsa Sadigh

We study a problem where a group of agents has to decide how some fixed value should be shared among them. We are interested in settings where the share that each agent receives is based on how that agent is evaluated by other members of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-06-04 Arthur Carvalho , Kate Larson

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

This paper studies the optimal mechanism to motivate effort in a dynamic principal-agent model without transfers. An agent is engaged in a task with uncertain future rewards and can quit at any time. The principal knows the reward and…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-16 Chang Liu

We investigate mechanism design without payments when agents have different types of preferences. Contrary to most settings in the literature where agents have the same preference, e.g. in the facility location games all agents would like…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2016-09-16 Qiang Zhang

Traffic scenarios are inherently interactive. Multiple decision-makers predict the actions of others and choose strategies that maximize their rewards. We view these interactions from the perspective of game theory which introduces various…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-04-28 Christian Muench , Frans A. Oliehoek , Dariu M. Gavrila

In this work, we study sequential contracts under matroid constraints. In the sequential setting, an agent can take actions one by one. After each action, the agent observes the stochastic value of the action and then decides which action…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Kanstantsin Pashkovich , Jacob Skitsko , Yun Xing

AI systems often rely on two key components: a specified goal or reward function and an optimization algorithm to compute the optimal behavior for that goal. This approach is intended to provide value for a principal: the user on whose…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-02-09 Simon Zhuang , Dylan Hadfield-Menell

In many multi-agent settings, participants can form teams to achieve collective outcomes that may far surpass their individual capabilities. Measuring the relative contributions of agents and allocating them shares of the reward that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-08-19 Daphne Cornelisse , Thomas Rood , Mateusz Malinowski , Yoram Bachrach , Tal Kachman

When a game involves many agents or when communication between agents is not possible, it is useful to resort to distributed learning where each agent acts in complete autonomy without any information on the other agents' situations.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-24 Jérôme Taupin , Xavier Leturc , Christophe J. Le Martret

Multi-agent decision problems are typically solved via distributed iterative algorithms, where the agents only communicate between themselves on a peer-to-peer network. Each agent usually maintains a copy of each decision variable, while…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-01 Mattia Bianchi , Sergio Grammatico

This paper explores the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to autonomously design incentive-compatible contracts in dual-principal-agent settings, a relatively unexplored aspect of algorithmic mechanism design. We develop a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-06-14 Qian Qi

We introduce the problem of assigning resources to improve their utilization. The motivation comes from settings where agents have uncertainty about their own values for using a resource, and where it is in the interest of a group that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2018-11-02 Hongyao Ma , Reshef Meir , David C. Parkes , James Zou

Cooperation is fundamental for society's viability, as it enables the emergence of structure within heterogeneous groups that seek collective well-being. However, individuals are inclined to defect in order to benefit from the group's…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Yao-hua Franck Xu , Tayeb Lemlouma , Arnaud Braud , Jean-Marie Bonnin

This paper studies competitions with rank-based reward among a large number of teams. Within each sizable team, we consider a mean-field contribution game in which each team member contributes to the jump intensity of a common Poisson…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-05-18 Xiang Yu , Yuchong Zhang , Zhou Zhou

We study network games in which players choose both the partners with whom they associate and an action level (e.g., effort) that creates spillovers for those partners. We introduce a framework and two solution concepts, extending standard…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-02-07 Evan Sadler , Benjamin Golub

We study the optimal contract problem in the \emph{combinatorial actions} framework of D\"utting et al.~[FOCS'21], where a principal delegates a project to an agent who chooses a subset of hidden, costly actions, and the resulting reward is…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Michal Feldman , Liat Yashin

This paper considers a network of agents, where each agent is assumed to take actions optimally with respect to a predefined payoff function involving the latest actions of the agent's neighbors. Neighborhood relationships stem from payoff…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2021-01-19 Sadegh Arefizadeh , Sadjaad Ozgoli , Sadegh Bolouki , Tamer Başar

We study the problem of a principal who wants to influence an agent's observable action, subject to an ex-post budget. The agent has a private type determining their cost function. This paper endogenizes the value of the resource driving…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-04-25 Nicole Immorlica , Nicholas Wu , Brendan Lucier

Auctions in which agents' payoffs are random variables have received increased attention in recent years. In particular, recent work in algorithmic mechanism design has produced mechanisms employing internal randomization, partly in…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-06-15 Shaddin Dughmi , Yuval Peres