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We analyze how firms should design wage contracts when workers collaborate in teams and effort costs depend on colleagues through a peer network. Performance-based compensation generates incentives that cascade through the organization,…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-04-17 Marc Claveria-Mayol , Pau Milán , Nicolás Oviedo-Dávila

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are a kind of nature-inspired general-purpose optimization algorithm, and have shown empirically good performance in solving various real-word optimization problems. During the past two decades, promising…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Chao Qian , Yang Yu , Ke Tang , Xin Yao , Zhi-Hua Zhou

Contract scheduling is a widely studied framework for designing real-time systems with interruptible capabilities. Previous work has showed that a prediction on the interruption time can help improve the performance of contract-based…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-04-22 Spyros Angelopoulos , Marcin Bienkowski , Christoph Dürr , Bertrand Simon

Can a principal still offer optimal dynamic contracts that are linear in end-of-period outcomes when the agent controls a process that exhibits memory? We provide a positive answer by considering a general Gaussian setting where the output…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-23 Eduardo Abi Jaber , Stéphane Villeneuve

We consider the design of experiments to evaluate treatments that are administered by self-interested agents, each seeking to achieve the highest evaluation and win the experiment. For example, in an advertising experiment, a company wishes…

Methodology · Statistics 2015-09-18 Panos Toulis , David C. Parkes , Elery Pfeffer , James Zou

Many-to-many matching with contracts is studied in the framework of revealed preferences. All preferences are described by choice functions that satisfy natural conditions. Under a no-externality assumption individual preferences can be…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-03-05 Daniel Lehmann

We consider Incentive Decision Processes, where a principal seeks to reduce its costs due to another agent's behavior, by offering incentives to the agent for alternate behavior. We focus on the case where a principal interacts with a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2012-10-19 Sashank J. Reddi , Emma Brunskill

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

Models of economic decision makers often include idealized assumptions, such as rationality, perfect foresight, and access to all relevant pieces of information. These assumptions often assure the models' internal validity, but, at the same…

General Economics · Economics 2021-07-09 Patrick Reinwald , Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

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

This study explores the design of an efficient rebate policy in auction markets, focusing on a continuous-time setting with competition among market participants. In this model, a stock exchange collects transaction fees from auction…

Trading and Market Microstructure · Quantitative Finance 2025-01-23 Thibaut Mastrolia , Tianrui Xu

We study the problem of reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon discounted linear Markov decision processes (MDPs), and propose the first computationally efficient algorithm achieving rate-optimal regret guarantees in this setting. Our…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Antoine Moulin , Gergely Neu , Luca Viano

Design-by-contract is an important technique for model-based design in which a composite system is specified by a collection of contracts that specify the behavioural assumptions and guarantees of each component. In this paper, we describe…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-07-30 Simon Foster , Ana Cavalcanti , Samuel Canham , Jim Woodcock , Frank Zeyda

This study investigates the development of an optimal execution strategy through reinforcement learning, aiming to determine the most effective approach for traders to buy and sell inventory within a finite time horizon. Our proposed model…

Trading and Market Microstructure · Quantitative Finance 2025-11-04 Yadh Hafsi , Edoardo Vittori

In Reinforcement Learning (abbreviated as RL), an agent interacts with the environment via a set of possible actions, and a reward is generated from some unknown distribution. The task here is to find an optimal set of actions such that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-21 Aditi Anand , Suman Banerjee , Dildar Ali

Multi-agent contract design has largely evaluated contracts through the lens of pure Nash equilibria (PNE). This focus, however, is not without loss: In general, the principal can strictly gain by recommending a complex, possibly…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Paul Dütting , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Thomas Kesselheim

Ranking is fundamental to many areas, such as search engine optimization, human feedback for language models, as well as peer grading. Crowdsourcing, which is often used for these tasks, requires proper incentivization to ensure accurate…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-26 Kiriaki Frangias , Andrew Lin , Ellen Vitercik , Manolis Zampetakis

We study a novel class of mechanism design problems in which the outcomes are constrained by the payments. This basic class of mechanism design problems captures many common economic situations, and yet it has not been studied, to our…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-12-02 Yaron Singer

We consider a hidden-action principal-agent model, in which actions require different amounts of effort, and the agent privately knows his ability that determines his cost of effort. We show that linear contracts admit approximation…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Tal Alon , Paul Dütting , Yingkai Li , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

We study the power and limits of optimal dynamic pricing in combinatorial markets; i.e., dynamic pricing that leads to optimal social welfare. Previous work by Cohen-Addad et al. [EC'16] demonstrated the existence of optimal dynamic prices…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-10-16 Ben Berger , Alon Eden , Michal Feldman