Algorithmic contract theory is a new frontier at the intersection of Economics and Computer Science. This course will introduce the basic concepts, highlight some key directions, and discuss open problems.
The tentative program for the course is:
Lecture 1: Simple vs Optimal Contracts
Lecture 2: Combinatorial Contracts
Lecture 3: Ambiguous Contracts
Lecture 4: The Sample Complexity of Contracts
Survey:
Paul Dütting, Michal Feldman, Inbal-Talgam Cohen. Algorithmic Contract Theory: A Survey. Found. Trends Theor. Comput. Sci., 16(3-4). pp. 211-412, 2024.
Individual papers:
Sanford J. Grossman and Oliver D. Hart. An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem. Econometrica, Vol.51(1), pp. 7-45, 1983.
Gabriel Carroll. Robustness and Linear Contracts. Am. Econ. Review, Vol. 105(2), pp. 536-563, 2015.
Paul Dütting, Tim Roughgarden, Inbal Talgam-Cohen. Simple vs. Optimal Contracts. EC 2019, pp. 369-387, 2019.
Moshe Babaioff, Michal Feldman, Noam Nisan, Eyal Winter. Combinatorial Agency. J. Econ. Theory, Vol.147(3), pp. 999-1034, 2012. (Preliminary version in EC 2006)
Paul Dütting, Tim Roughgarden, Inbal Talgam-Cohen. The Complexity of Contracts. SIAM J. Comput., Vol. 50(1), pp. 211-254, 2021. (Preliminary version in SODA 2020)
Paul Dütting, Tomer Ezra, Michal Feldman, Thomas Kesselheim. Combinatorial Contracts. FOCS 2021, pp. 815-826, 2021.
Paul Dütting, Tomer Ezra, Michal Feldman, Thomas Kesselheim. Multi-Agent Contracts. STOC 2023, pp. 1311-1324, 2023.
Paul Dütting, Tomer Ezra, Michal Feldman, Thomas Kesselheim. Multi-Agent Combinatorial Contracts. SODA 2025, pp. 1857-1891, 2023.
Paul Dütting, Michal Feldman, Daniel Peretz. Larry Samuelson. Ambiguous Contracts. Econometrica, Vol.92(6), pp. 1967-1992, 2024. (Preliminary version in EC 2023)
Chien-Ju Ho, Alkesandrs Slivkins, Jennifer Wortmann Vaughn. Adaptive Contract Design for Crowdsourcing Markets: Bandit Algorithms for Repeated Principal-Agent Problems. J. Artif. Intell. Res., Vol. 55(1). pp. 317-359, 2016. (Preliminary version in EC 2014)
Banghua Zhu, Stephen Bates, Zhuoran Yang, Yixin Wang, Jiantao Jiao, Michael B. Jordan. The Sample Complexity of Online Contract Design. EC 2023, p. 1088, 2023.
Paul Dütting, Michal Feldman, Tomasz Ponitka, Ermis Soumalias. The Pseudo-Dimension of Contracts. EC 2025, forthcoming.