Delegating decisions in strategic settings

Sarit Kraus, Michael Wooldridge

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

We formalise and investigate the following problem. A principal must delegate a number of decisions to a collection of agents. Once the decisions are delegated, the agents to whom the decisions are delegated will act selfishly, rationally, and independently in pursuit of their own preferences. The principal himself is assumed to be self-interested, and has some goal that he desires to be achieved. The delegation problem is then, given such a setting, is it possible for the principal to delegate decisions in such a way that, if all the agents to whom decisions have been delegated then make decisions rationally, the principal's goal will be achieved in equilibrium. We formalise this problem using Boolean games, which provides a very natural framework within which to capture the delegation problem: decisions are directly represented as Boolean variables, which the principal assigns to agents. After motivating and formally defining the delegation problem, we investigate the computational complexity of the problem, and some issues surrounding it.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationECAI 2012 - 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 27-31 August 2012, Montpellier, France - Including Prestigious Applications of Artificial Intelligence (PAIS-2012) System Demonstration
PublisherIOS Press BV
Pages468-473
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)9781614990970
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2012 - Montpellier, France
Duration: 27 Aug 201231 Aug 2012

Publication series

NameFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
Volume242
ISSN (Print)0922-6389
ISSN (Electronic)1879-8314

Conference

Conference20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2012
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityMontpellier
Period27/08/1231/08/12

Bibliographical note

Place of conference:France

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