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Related papers: Motivating Innovation with Misspecified Contracts

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We study a natural application of contract design in the context of sequential exploration problems. In our principal-agent setting, a search task is delegated to an agent. The agent performs a sequential exploration of $n$ boxes, suffers…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-01-27 Martin Hoefer , Conrad Schecker , Kevin Schewior

We analyze a principal-agent procurement problem in which the principal (she) is unaware some of the marginal cost types of the agent (he). Communication arises naturally as some types of the agent may have an incentive to raise the…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-10-27 Alejandro Francetich , Burkhard C. Schipper

We study the emergence of conformity preferences in an environment in which agents choose effort under heterogeneous, possibly misspecified returns, and social interactions do not directly affect material payoffs. Some agents choose effort…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2026-05-05 Paolo Pin , Roberto Rozzi

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Ilgin Dogan , Zuo-Jun Max Shen , Anil Aswani

This brief note considers the problem of learning with dynamic-optimizing principal-agent setting, in which the agents are allowed to have global perspectives about the learning process, i.e., the ability to view things according to their…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-12 Getachew K. Befekadu

In this paper, a new yet indirect performance guaranteed framework is established to address the distributed tracking control problem for networked uncertain nonlinear strict-feedback systems with unknown time-varying gains under a directed…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-07-13 Zeqiang Li , Yujuan Wang , Xiucai Huang

In bipartite matching problems, agents on two sides of a graph want to be paired according to their preferences. The stability of a matching depends on these preferences, which in uncertain environments also reflect agents' beliefs about…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Jonathan Shaki , Jiarui Gan , Sarit Kraus

We introduce a dynamic mechanism design problem in which the designer wants to offer for sale an item to an agent, and another item to the same agent at some point in the future. The agent's joint distribution of valuations for the two…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-22 Christos Papadimitriou , George Pierrakos , Christos-Alexandros Psomas , Aviad Rubinstein

We study the hidden-action principal-agent problem in an online setting. In each round, the principal posts a contract that specifies the payment to the agent based on each outcome. The agent then makes a strategic choice of action that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Banghua Zhu , Stephen Bates , Zhuoran Yang , Yixin Wang , Jiantao Jiao , Michael I. Jordan

This paper studies continuous-time optimal contracting in a hierarchy problem which generalises the model of Sung (2015). The hierarchy is modeled by a series of interlinked principal-agent problems, leading to a sequence of Stackelberg…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-22 Emma Hubert

I provide a sufficient condition under which a principal does not benefit from committing to a mechanism in economic models represented by a maximisation problem under constraints. These problems include mechanism design, principal-agent…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2025-10-10 Nathan Hancart

In complex multi-agent systems involving heterogeneous teams, uncertainty arises from numerous sources like environmental disturbances, model inaccuracies, and changing tasks. This causes planned trajectories to become infeasible, requiring…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-03-18 Neelanga Thelasingha , Agung Julius , James Humann , James Dotterweich

We study a sequential mechanism design problem in which a principal seeks to elicit truthful reports from multiple rational agents while starting with no prior knowledge of agents' beliefs. We introduce Distributionally Robust Adaptive…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Qiushi Han , David Simchi-Levi , Renfei Tan , Zishuo Zhao

This paper introduces assume/guarantee contracts on continuous-time control systems, hereby extending contract theories for discrete systems to certain new model classes and specifications. Contracts are regarded as formal characterizations…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-03-18 Bart Besselink , Karl H. Johansson , Arjan van der Schaft

In this study, I investigate the dynamic decision problem with a finite parameter space when the functional form of conditional expected rewards is misspecified. Traditional algorithms, such as Thompson Sampling, guarantee neither an…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-05-22 Xinyu Dai

This paper studies the design of mechanisms that are robust to misspecification. We introduce a novel notion of robustness that connects a variety of disparate approaches and study its implications in a wide class of mechanism design…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2021-08-31 Giuseppe Lopomo , Luca Rigotti , Chris Shannon

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

We study a bilevel \emph{max-max} optimization framework for principal-agent contract design, in which a principal chooses incentives to maximize utility while anticipating the agent's best response. This problem, central to moral hazard…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-27 Tomer Galanti , Aarya Bookseller , Korok Ray

We study a Bayesian contract design problem in which a principal interacts with an unknown agent. We consider the single-parameter uncertainty model introduced by Alon et al. [2021], in which the agent's type is described by a single…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-21 Martino Bernasconi , Matteo Castiglioni , Andrea Celli

Power-seeking behavior is a key source of risk from advanced AI, but our theoretical understanding of this phenomenon is relatively limited. Building on existing theoretical results demonstrating power-seeking incentives for most reward…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-04-14 Victoria Krakovna , Janos Kramar
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