Targeting in networks under costly agreements

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Belhaj, Mohamed; Deroian, Frederic; Safi, Shahir
• 署名单位: Aix-Marseille Universite; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Aix-Marseille Universite; Concordia University - Canada
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.03.003
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 154-172
• 关键词: Networked synergies; Optimal targeting; Linear scheme

摘要

We consider agents organized in an undirected network of local complementarities. A principal with a fixed budget offers costly bilateral contracts in order to increase the sum of agents' effort. We study contracts rewarding effort exceeding the effort made in the absence of the principal. First, targeting a subgroup of the whole society becomes optimal under substantial contracting costs, which significantly increases the computational complexity of the principal's problem. In particular, under sufficiently low intensity of complementarities, a correspondence is established between optimal targeting and an NP-hard problem. Second, for any intensities of complementarities, the optimal unit returns offered to all targeted agents are positive for all contracting costs and in general heterogeneous, even though networks are undirected. Yet, heterogeneity never leads to negative returns, which implies that, with these linear payment schemes, coordination is never an issue for the principal. (c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.