Related papers: Distributional Robustness of Linear Contracts
We study a general class of Principal-Agent problems in continuous time under hidden action. By formulating the model as a coupled stochastic optimal control problem we are able to find a set of necessary conditions characterizing optimal…
We study the combinatorial contracting problem of D\"utting et al. [FOCS '21], in which a principal seeks to incentivize an agent to take a set of costly actions. In their model, there is a binary outcome (the agent can succeed or fail),…
This paper examines the optimal contracts in a two-dimensional screening model where one dimension(group identity) is verifiable by agents but not falsifiable. A principal offers contracts to agents who differ in cost types and group…
This paper studies optimal contract design in private market investing, focusing on internal decision making in venture capital and private equity firms. A principal relies on an agent who privately exerts costly due diligence effort and…
We consider a general formulation of the Principal-Agent problem with a lump-sum payment on a finite horizon, providing a systematic method for solving such problems. Our approach is the following: we first find the contract that is optimal…
The optimization criterion for dividends from a risky business is most often formalized in terms of the expected present value of future dividends. That criterion disregards a potential, explicit demand for stability of dividends. In…
We analyze how firms should design wage contracts when workers collaborate in teams and effort costs depend on colleagues through a peer network. Performance-based compensation generates incentives that cascade through the organization,…
Despite strong performance in numerous applications, the fragility of deep learning to input perturbations has raised serious questions about its use in safety-critical domains. While adversarial training can mitigate this issue in…
In this paper we show how the relaxation techniques can be used to establish the existence of an optimal contract in presence of information asymmetry. The method we illustrate was initially motivated by the problem of designing optimal…
This paper considers the distributed robust control problems of uncertain linear multi-agent systems with undirected communication topologies. It is assumed that the agents have identical nominal dynamics while subject to different…
This study develops and analyzes an optimization model of smart contract adoption under bounded risk, linking structural theory with simulation and real-world validation. We examine how adoption intensity alpha is structurally pinned at a…
A principal wishes to transact business with a multidimensional distribution of agents whose preferences are known only in the aggregate. Assuming a twist (= generalized Spence-Mirrlees single-crossing) hypothesis and that agents can choose…
Firms increasingly delegate decisions to learning algorithms in platform markets. Standard algorithms perform well when platform policies are stationary, but firms often face ambiguity about whether policies are stationary or adapt…
In this paper, we study the robust consensus problem for a set of discrete-time linear agents to coordinate over an uncertain communication network, which is to achieve consensus against the transmission errors and noises resulted from the…
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…
We show that in delegation problems, a principal benefits from belief misalignment vis-\`a-vis an agent when the latter can flexibly acquire costly information. The agent optimally succumbs to confirmatory learning, leading him to favor the…
We study robustly optimal mechanisms for selling multiple items. The seller maximizes revenue against a worst-case distribution of a buyer's valuations within a set of distributions, called an "ambiguity" set. We identify the exact forms of…
Coordination is a desirable feature in multi-agent systems, allowing the execution of tasks that would be impossible by individual agents. We study coordination by a team of strategic agents choosing to undertake one of the multiple tasks.…
Algorithmic contract design studies scenarios where a principal incentivizes an agent to exert effort on her behalf. In this work, we focus on settings where the agent's type is drawn from an unknown distribution, and formalize an offline…
This paper deals with an optimization problem over a network of agents, where the cost function is the sum of the individual objectives of the agents and the constraint set is the intersection of local constraints. Most existing methods…