Related papers: Delegated Contracting
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…
This paper studies delegation in a model of discrete choice. In the delegation problem, an uninformed principal must consult an informed agent to make a decision. Both the agent and principal have preferences over the decided-upon action…
There are many settings in which a principal performs a task by delegating it to an agent, who searches over possible solutions and proposes one to the principal. This describes many aspects of the workflow within organizations, as well as…
We introduce a new model of combinatorial contracts in which a principal delegates the execution of a costly task to an agent. To complete the task, the agent can take any subset of a given set of unobservable actions, each of which has an…
A principal delegates decisions to a biased agent. Payoffs depend on a state that the principal cannot observe. Initially, the agent does not observe the state, but he can acquire information about it at a cost. We characterize the…
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.…
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…
We study principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (a.k.a. contract) so as to induce an agent to take a costly, unobservable action. We relax the assumption that the principal perfectly…
We study hidden-action principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme (called contract) so as to incentivize the agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. In…
We consider a general framework of optimal mechanism design under adverse selection and ambiguity about the type distribution of agents. We prove the existence of optimal mechanisms under minimal assumptions on the contract space and prove…
Consider a principal who wants to search through a space of stochastic solutions for one maximizing their utility. If the principal cannot conduct this search on their own, they may instead delegate this problem to an agent with distinct…
Motivated by the emergence of decentralized machine learning (ML) ecosystems, we study the delegation of data collection. Taking the field of contract theory as our starting point, we design optimal and near-optimal contracts that deal with…
Decision-makers in high-stakes selection processes often face a fundamental choice: whether to make decisions themselves or to delegate authority to another entity whose incentives may only be partially aligned with their own. Such…
In the classical principal-agent hidden-action contract model, a principal delegates the execution of a costly task to an agent. In order to complete the task, the agent chooses an action from a set of actions, where each potential action…
Delegation allows an agent to request that another agent completes a task. In many situations the task may be delegated onwards, and this process can repeat until it is eventually, successfully or unsuccessfully, performed. We consider…
We analyze a model of selling a single object to a principal-agent pair who want to acquire the object for a firm. The principal and the agent have different assessments of the object's value to the firm. The agent is budget-constrained…
We study a model of delegation in which a principal takes a multidimensional action and an agent has private information about a multidimensional state of the world. The principal can design any direct mechanism, including stochastic ones.…
In the conventional principal-agent problem, a principal delegates a task to an agent and formulates a contract to incentivize the agent's actions on behalf of the principal. However, this framework overlooks the information that is…
This paper studies contracting in the presence of externalities with a non-contractible outsider. Multiple equilibria arise from strategic symmetry between the insider agent and the outsider. To address strategic uncertainty, the principal…
We study a principal-agent team production model. The principal hires a team of agents to participate in a common production task. The exact effort of each agent is unobservable and unverifiable, but the total production outcome (e.g. the…