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In this paper we consider a principal agent problem where the agent is allowed to quit, by incurring a cost. When the current agent quits the job, the principal will hire a new one, possibly with a different type. We characterize the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-09-04 Jianfeng Zhang , Zimu Zhu

We study a new class of contract design problems where a principal delegates the execution of multiple projects to a set of agents. The principal's expected reward from each project is a combinatorial function of the agents working on it.…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Tal Alon , Matteo Castiglioni , Junjie Chen , Tomer Ezra , Yingkai Li , Inbal Talgam-Cohen

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

In principal-agent models, a principal offers a contract to an agent to perform a certain task. The agent exerts a level of effort that maximizes her utility. The principal is oblivious to the agent's chosen level of effort, and conditions…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-14 Alon Cohen , Moran Koren , Argyrios Deligkas

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…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-03 Paul Duetting , Tomer Ezra , Michal Feldman , Thomas Kesselheim

The problem of computing near-optimal contracts in combinatorial settings has recently attracted significant interest in the computer science community. Previous work has provided a rich body of structural and algorithmic insights into this…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-06-26 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

In a continuous-time setting where a risk-averse agent controls the drift of an output process driven by a Brownian motion, optimal contracts are linear in the terminal output; this result is well-known in a setting with moral hazard and…

Portfolio Management · Quantitative Finance 2018-07-31 N. Packham

Contract theory studies how a principal can incentivize agents to exert costly, unobservable effort through performance-based payments. While classical economic models provide elegant characterizations of optimal solutions, modern…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-10-20 Michal Feldman

We analyze conditional optimization problems arising in discrete time Principal-Agent problems of delegated portfolio optimization with linear contracts. Applying tools from Conditional Analysis we show that some results known in the…

Mathematical Finance · Quantitative Finance 2016-06-15 Julio Backhoff , Ulrich Horst

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

We study multi-agent contract design, where a principal incentivizes a team of agents to take costly actions that jointly determine the project success via a combinatorial reward function. While prior work largely focuses on unconstrained…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Michal Feldman , Yoav Gal-Tzur , Tomasz Ponitka , Maya Schlesinger

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

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

In this paper, we investigate a moral hazard problem in finite time with lump$-$sum and continuous payments, involving infinitely many Agents with mean field type interactions, hired by one Principal. By reinterpreting the mean$-$field game…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Romuald Elie , Thibaut Mastrolia , Dylan Possamaï

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…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-09-09 Hongcheng Li

We study a moral hazard problem with adverse selection: a risk-neutral agent can directly control the output distribution and possess private information about the production environment. The principal designs a menu of contracts satisfying…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-01-08 Siwen Liu

This work considers a repeated principal-agent bandit game, where the principal can only interact with her environment through the agent. The principal and the agent have misaligned objectives and the choice of action is only left to the…

In a framework close to the one developed by Holmstr\"om and Milgrom [44], we study the optimal contracting scheme between a Principal and several Agents. Each hired Agent is in charge of one project, and can make efforts towards managing…

Economics · Quantitative Finance 2016-05-27 Romuald Elie , Dylan Possamaï

We study the fundamental problem of designing contracts in principal-agent problems under uncertainty. Previous works mostly addressed Bayesian settings in which principal's uncertainty is modeled as a probability distribution over agent's…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-02-22 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi

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