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Achieving a socially desirable operating point for a multimodal transportation system is challenging when Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) and Public Transit (PT) operators pursue selfish objectives alongside endogenous passenger…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-19 Xinling Li , Runyu Zhang , Gioele Zardini

We study a variant of the principal-agent problem in which the principal does not directly observe the agent's effort outcome; rather, she gets a signal about the agent's action according to a variable information structure designed by a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-09-06 Yakov Babichenko , Inbal Talgam-Cohen , Haifeng Xu , Konstantin Zabarnyi

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

The hidden-action model captures a fundamental problem of principal-agent theory and provides an optimal sharing rule when only the outcome but not the effort can be observed. However, the hidden-action model builds on various explicit and…

General Economics · Economics 2020-04-15 Stephan Leitner , Friederike Wall

We study principal-agent problems in which a principal commits to an outcome-dependent payment scheme -- called contract -- in order to induce an agent to take a costly, unobservable action leading to favorable outcomes. We consider a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-06-10 Francesco Bacchiocchi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

In this article, we employ a principal-agent model to analyze optimal contract design in a monopolistic reinsurance market under adverse selection with a continuum of insurer types. Instead of using the classical expected utility framework,…

Risk Management · Quantitative Finance 2026-01-06 Ka Chun Cheung , Sheung Chi Phillip Yam , Fei Lung Yuen , Yiying Zhang

Reinforcement learning has become a cornerstone technique for developing reasoning models in complex tasks, ranging from mathematical problem-solving to imaginary reasoning. The optimization of these models typically relies on policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Qingnan Ren , Shiting Huang , Zhen Fang , Zehui Chen , Lin Chen , Lijun Li , Feng Zhao

We introduce a novel model of contracts with combinatorial actions that accounts for sequential and adaptive agent behavior. As in the standard model, a principal delegates the execution of a costly project to an agent. There are $n$…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Maya Schlesinger

In the combinatorial-action contract model (D\"utting et al., FOCS'21) a principal delegates the execution of a complex project to an agent, who can choose any subset from a given set of actions. Each set of actions incurs a cost to the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Paul Dütting , Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Aviad Rubinstein

We consider the classic principal-agent model of contract theory, in which a principal designs an outcome-dependent compensation scheme to incentivize an agent to take a costly and unobservable action. When all of the model…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-08-11 Paul Dütting , Tim Roughgarden , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

Consider costly and time-consuming tasks that add up to the success of a project, and must be fitted into a given time-frame. This is an instance of the classic budgeted maximization (knapsack) problem, which admits an FPTAS. Now assume an…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Ilan Doron-Arad , Hadas Shachnai , Gilad Shmerler , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

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

We study revenue maximization for agents with additive preferences, subject to downward-closed constraints on the set of feasible allocations. In seminal work, Alaei~\cite{alaei2014bayesian} introduced a powerful multi-to-single agent…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-07-18 Kshipra Bhawalkar , Marios Mertzanidis , Divyarthi Mohan , Alexandros Psomas

Online advertising systems have recently transitioned to autobidding, allowing advertisers to delegate bidding decisions to automated agents. Each advertiser directs their agent to optimize an objective function subject to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Riccardo Colini-Baldeschi , Sophie Klumper , Twan Kroll , Stefano Leonardi , Guido Schäfer , Artem Tsikiridis

Principal-Agent (PA) problems describe a broad class of economic relationships characterized by misaligned incentives and asymmetric information. The Principal's problem is to find optimal incentives given the available information, e.g., a…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2022-02-21 Tong Mu , Stephan Zheng , Alexander Trott

The study of first-order optimization algorithms (FOA) typically starts with assumptions on the objective functions, most commonly smoothness and strong convexity. These metrics are used to tune the hyperparameters of FOA. We introduce a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-30 Charles Guille-Escuret , Baptiste Goujaud , Manuela Girotti , Ioannis Mitliagkas

Computer use agents (CUAs) have shown strong potential for automating complex digital workflows, yet their training remains constrained by costly live environment interaction and limited high-quality supervision. Existing filtered behavior…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Yifei He , Rui Yang , Hao Bai , Tong Zhang , Han Zhao

Making decisions in complex environments is a key challenge in artificial intelligence (AI). Situations involving multiple decision makers are particularly complex, leading to computational intractability of principled solution methods. A…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-03-02 Frans A. Oliehoek , Stefan Witwicki , Leslie P. Kaelbling

We consider the principal-agent problem with heterogeneous agents. Previous works assume that the principal signs independent incentive contracts with every agent to make them invest more efforts on the tasks. However, in many…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2019-11-12 Shenke Xiao , Zihe Wang , Mengjing Chen , Pingzhong Tang , Xiwang Yang

Role-playing agents (RPAs) require balancing multiple objectives, such as instruction following, persona consistency, and stylistic fidelity, which are not always perfectly aligned across different dimensions. While prior work has primarily…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Chonghua Liao , Ke Wang , Yuchuan Wu , Ruoran Li , Fei Huang , Yongbin Li