Weight-ranked divide-and-conquer contracts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chan, Lester T.
• 署名单位: Southern University of Science & Technology
• 刊物名称: THEORETICAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1933-6837
• DOI: 10.3982/TE5602
• 发表日期: 2025-07-01
• 页码: 857-882
• 关键词: Contracting with externalities; divide and conquer; potential games; networks; public goods; C72; D85; D86; H41

摘要

This paper studies a large class of multi-agent contracting models with the property that agents' payoffs constitute a weighted potential game. Multiple equilibria arise due to agents' strategic interactions. I fully characterize a contracting scheme that is optimal for the principal for all equilibrium selection criteria that are more pessimistic than potential maximization. This scheme ranks agents in ascending order of their weights in the weighted potential game and then induces them to accept their offers in a dominance-solvable way, starting from the first agent. I apply the general results to networks, public goods/bads, and a class of binary-action applications.