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We introduce a novel problem setting for algorithmic contract design, named the principal-MARL contract design problem. This setting extends traditional contract design to account for dynamic and stochastic environments using Markov Games…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-08-20 David Molina Concha , Kyeonghyeon Park , Hyun-Rok Lee , Taesik Lee , Chi-Guhn Lee

We study a class of procurement auctions with a budget constraint, where an auctioneer is interested in buying resources or services from a set of agents. Ideally, the auctioneer would like to select a subset of the resources so as to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2017-10-10 Georgios Amanatidis , Georgios Birmpas , Evangelos Markakis

We propose a distributionally robust principal agent formulation, which generalizes some common variants of worst-case and Bayesian principal agent problems. We construct a theoretical framework to certify whether any surjective contract…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-01-17 Peter Zhang

In this article, we develop a modular framework for the application of Reinforcement Learning to the problem of Optimal Trade Execution. The framework is designed with flexibility in mind, in order to ease the implementation of different…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2022-08-15 Fernando de Meer Pardo , Christoph Auth , Florin Dascalu

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

We study a unified framework for optimization problems defined on dual-modular instances, where the input comprises a finite ground set $V$ and two set functions: a monotone supermodular reward function $\f$ and a strictly monotone…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-05-27 T-H. Hubert Chan , Shinuo Ma

The agency problem emerges in today's large scale machine learning tasks, where the learners are unable to direct content creation or enforce data collection. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework for aligning economic interests…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-07-03 Jibang Wu , Siyu Chen , Mengdi Wang , Huazheng Wang , Haifeng Xu

We study the role of regulatory inspections in a contract design problem in which a principal interacts separately with multiple agents. Each agent's hidden action includes a dimension that determines whether they undertake an extra costly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Alireza Fallah , Michael I. Jordan

A principal uses payments conditioned on stochastic outcomes of a team project to elicit costly effort from the team members. We develop a multi-agent generalization of a classic first-order approach to contract optimization by leveraging…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-03-13 Krishna Dasaratha , Benjamin Golub , Anant Shah

This paper investigates the moral hazard problem in finite horizon with both continuous and lump-sum payments, involving a time-inconsistent sophisticated agent and a standard utility maximiser principal. Building upon the so-called dynamic…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-03-06 Camilo Hernández , Dylan Possamaï

Autonomous robots are increasingly utilized in realistic scenarios with multiple complex tasks. In these scenarios, there may be a preferred way of completing all of the given tasks, but it is often in conflict with optimal execution.…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-06-26 Peter Amorese , Morteza Lahijanian

This paper explores the economic interactions within modern crowdsourcing markets. In these markets, employers issue requests for tasks, platforms facilitate the recruitment of crowd workers, and workers complete tasks for monetary rewards.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Tian Bai , Yiding Feng , Yaohao Liu , Mengfan Ma , Mingyu Xiao

We study a two-period moral hazard problem; there are two agents, with action sets that are unknown to the principal. The principal contracts with each agent sequentially, and seeks to maximize the worst-case discounted sum of payoffs,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-02-15 Chang Liu

Constrained submodular set function maximization problems often appear in multi-agent decision-making problems with a discrete feasible set. A prominent example is the problem of multi-agent mobile sensor placement over a discrete domain.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-02 Navid Rezazadeh , Solmaz S. Kia

We study how governments promote social welfare through the design of contracting environments. We model the regulation of contracting as default delegation: the government chooses a delegation set of contract terms it is willing to…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2022-05-17 Zoë Hitzig , Benjamin Niswonger

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

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 study an optimal stopping problem with an unbounded, time-dependent and discontinuous reward function. This problem is motivated by the pricing of a variable annuity contract with guaranteed minimum maturity benefit, under the assumption…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2026-03-10 Anne Mackay , Marie-Claude Vachon

This paper presents an interpretable reward design framework for reinforcement learning based constrained optimal control problems with state and terminal constraints. The problem is formalized within a standard partially observable Markov…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-05 Jingjie Ni , Fangfei Li , Xin Jin , Xianlun Peng , Yang Tang

To strengthen data privacy and security, federated learning as an emerging machine learning technique is proposed to enable large-scale nodes, e.g., mobile devices, to distributedly train and globally share models without revealing their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-25 Jiawen Kang , Zehui Xiong , Dusit Niyato , Han Yu , Ying-Chang Liang , Dong In Kim