{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Principal-Agent Boolean Games","authors":[{"name":"David Hyland","slug":"david-hyland","given":"David","family":"Hyland","affiliation":"University of Oxford , UK"},{"name":"Julian Gutierrez","slug":"julian-gutierrez","given":"Julian","family":"Gutierrez","affiliation":"Monash University , Australia"},{"name":"Michael Wooldridge","slug":"michael-wooldridge","given":"Michael","family":"Wooldridge","affiliation":"University of Oxford , UK"}],"abstract":"We introduce and study a computational version of the principal-agent problem -- a classic problem in Economics that arises when a principal desires to contract an agent to carry out some task, but has incomplete information about the agent or their subsequent actions. The key challenge in this setting is for the principal to design a contract for the agent such that the agent's preferences are then aligned with those of the principal. We study this problem using a variation of Boolean games, where multiple players each choose valuations for Boolean variables under their control, seeking the satisfaction of a personal goal formula. In our setting, the principal can only observe some subset of these variables, and the principal chooses a contract which rewards players on the basis of the assignments they make for the variables that are observable to the principal. The principal's challenge is to design a contract so that, firstly, the principal's goal is achieved in some or all Nash equilibrium choices, and secondly, that the principal is able to verify that their goal is satisfied. In this paper, we formally define this problem and completely characterise the computational complexity of the most relevant decision problems associated with it.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2023/17","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2023/17","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2023/0017.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2023/17.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2023/bibtex/17","volume":{"slug":"2023","title":"Proceedings of the Thirty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2023","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2023/","year":2023,"location":"Macao, SAR","dates":"19-25 August 2023","editors":"Edith Elkind","isbn":"978-1-956792-03-4","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2023"},"section":"Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems","track":"Main Track","number":17,"pages":{"first":144,"last":152},"keywords":["Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: MAS: Agent theories and models","Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: MAS: Formal verification, validation and synthesis","Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: MAS: Coordination and cooperation"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Ågotnes et al., 2013] Thomas Ågotnes, Paul Harrenstein, Wiebe Van Der Hoek, and Michael Wooldridge. 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