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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

We investigate the mechanism design problem faced by a principal who hires \emph{multiple} agents to gather and report costly information. Then, the principal exploits the information to make an informed decision. We model this problem as a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-07-13 Federico Cacciamani , Matteo Castiglioni , Nicola Gatti

Heterogeneous networks comprise agents with varying capabilities in terms of computation, storage, and communication. In such settings, it is crucial to factor in the operating characteristics in allowing agents to choose appropriate…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-09-07 Yichuan Li , Petros Voulgaris , Nikolaos M. Freris

The analysis in Part I revealed interesting properties for subgradient learning algorithms in the context of stochastic optimization when gradient noise is present. These algorithms are used when the risk functions are non-smooth and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-04-21 Bicheng Ying , Ali H. Sayed

Traditional approaches to the design of multi-agent navigation algorithms consider the environment as a fixed constraint, despite the influence of spatial constraints on agents' performance. Yet hand-designing conducive environment layouts…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-05-22 Zhan Gao , Amanda Prorok

Dual methods are useful for distributed optimization because they allow agent-level subproblems to be solved in parallel. However, achieving primal feasibility with dual methods is a challenge; it can take many iterations to find prices…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Tetiana Parshakova , Yicheng Bai , Garrett van Ryzin , Stephen Boyd

We study the optimal design of electricity contracts among a population of consumers with different needs. This question is tackled within the framework of Principal-Agent problems in presence of adverse selection. The particular features…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-09-17 Clémence Alasseur , Ivar Ekeland , Romuald Elie , Nicolás Hernández Santibáñez , Dylan Possamaï

We investigate the probabilistic feasibility of randomized solutions to two distinct classes of uncertain multi-agent optimization programs. We first assume that only the constraints of the program are affected by uncertainty, while the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-09-29 George Pantazis , Filiberto Fele , Kostas Margellos

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

We present differentially private (DP) algorithms for bilevel optimization, a problem class that received significant attention lately in various machine learning applications. These are the first algorithms for such problems under standard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-15 Guy Kornowski

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

Bilevel programming has recently received attention in the literature due to its wide range of applications, including reinforcement learning and hyper-parameter optimization. However, it is widely assumed that the underlying bilevel…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-11 Parvin Nazari , Ahmad Mousavi , Davoud Ataee Tarzanagh , George Michailidis

Modern AI systems increasingly operate inside markets and institutions where data, behavior, and incentives are endogenous. This paper develops an economic foundation for multi-agent learning by studying a principal-agent interaction in a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-08 Nassim Helou

Many safety-critical real-world problems, such as autonomous driving and collaborative robots, are of a distributed multi-agent nature. To optimize the performance of these systems while ensuring safety, we can cast them as distributed…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-08-20 Abdullah Tokmak , Thomas B. Schön , Dominik Baumann

Bilevel optimization, the problem of minimizing a value function which involves the arg-minimum of another function, appears in many areas of machine learning. In a large scale empirical risk minimization setting where the number of samples…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-12-03 Mathieu Dagréou , Pierre Ablin , Samuel Vaiter , Thomas Moreau

Generative models form the backbone of modern machine learning, underpinning state-of-the-art systems in text, vision, and multimodal applications. While Maximum Likelihood Estimation has traditionally served as the dominant training…

Fairness is desirable yet challenging to achieve within multi-agent systems, especially when agents differ in latent traits that affect their abilities. This hidden heterogeneity often leads to unequal distributions of wealth, even when…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-23 Jakub Tłuczek , Victor Villin , Christos Dimitrakakis

This paper proposes a novel continuous-time dynamic contract framework that has a risk-limiting capability. If a principal and an agent enter into such a contract, the principal can optimally manage its performance and risk with a guarantee…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2014-10-10 Insoon Yang , Duncan S. Callaway , Claire J. Tomlin

Crowdsourcing markets have emerged as a popular platform for matching available workers with tasks to complete. The payment for a particular task is typically set by the task's requester, and may be adjusted based on the quality of the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-09-03 Chien-Ju Ho , Aleksandrs Slivkins , Jennifer Wortman Vaughan

Adding a capacity constraint to a hidden-action principal-agent problem results in the same set of Pareto optimal contracts as the unconstrained problem where output is scaled down by a constant factor. This scaling factor is increasing in…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-12-03 Aubrey Clark