Related papers: Sequential Linear Contracts on Matroids
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…
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…
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…
I study dynamic contracting where Sender privately observes a Markovian state and seeks to motivate Receiver, who acts. Sender provides incentives in two ways: payments, which alter payoffs ex-post, and (Bayesian) persuasion, which shapes…
We consider the problem of creating assistants that can help agents solve new sequential decision problems, assuming the agent is not able to specify the reward function explicitly to the assistant. Instead of acting in place of the agent…
We consider the problem of sequential evaluation, in which an evaluator observes candidates in a sequence and assigns scores to these candidates in an online, irrevocable fashion. Motivated by the psychology literature that has studied…
Recent technology advances have enabled firms to flexibly process and analyze sophisticated employee performance data at a reduced and yet significant cost. We develop a theory of optimal incentive contracting where the monitoring…
I study multidimensional sequential screening. A monopolist contracts with a buyer who privately observes information about the distribution of their eventual valuations for multiple goods. After initial private information is reported and…
Following the risk-taking model of Seel and Strack, $n$ players decide when to stop privately observed Brownian motions with drift and absorption at zero. They are then ranked according to their level of stopping and paid a rank-dependent…
In this paper, we consider the problem of a Principal aiming at designing a reward function for a population of heterogeneous agents. We construct an incentive based on the ranking of the agents, so that a competition among the latter is…
This paper explores the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to autonomously design incentive-compatible contracts in dual-principal-agent settings, a relatively unexplored aspect of algorithmic mechanism design. We develop a…
We study the combinatorial contract design problem, introduced and studied by Dutting et. al. (2021, 2022), in both the single and multi-agent settings. Prior work has examined the problem when the principal's utility function is submodular…
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.…
While the success of large language models (LLMs) increases demand for machine-generated text, current pay-per-token pricing schemes create a misalignment of incentives known in economics as moral hazard: Text-generating agents have strong…
We study the problem of assigning objects to agents in the presence of arbitrary linear constraints when agents are allowed to be indifferent between objects. Our main contribution is the generalization of the (Extended) Probabilistic…
We study sequential bargaining between a proposer and a veto player. Both have single-peaked preferences, but the proposer is uncertain about the veto player's ideal point. The proposer cannot commit to future proposals. When players are…
We study a repeated contracting setting in which a Principal adaptively chooses amongst $k$ Agents at each of $T$ rounds. The Agents are non-myopic, and so a mechanism for the Principal induces a $T$-round extensive form game amongst the…
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 the problem of how to coordinate the actions of independent agents in a distributed system where message arrival times are unbounded, but are determined by an exponential probability distribution. Asynchronous protocols executed in…
Motivated by a number of real-world applications from domains like healthcare and sustainable transportation, in this paper we study a scenario of repeated principal-agent games within a multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework, where: the…