Optimally Curating an Event

Hajiaghayi, Mohammad; Lahaie, Sébastien; Mahdavi, Mohammad; Shin, Suho

doi:10.24963/ijcai.2026/382

Optimally Curating an Event

Mohammad Hajiaghayi, Sebastien Lahaie, Mohammad Mahdavi, Suho Shin

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Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Main Track. Pages 3436-3443.

https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/382

Keywords

Natural Language Processing: Applications
Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism design

Abstract

We study the optimal design of a self-financing event, a problem that requires balancing the recruitment of costly, positive-value participants with revenue-generating agents who may impose negative values on the event.

We introduce a novel two-sided mechanism design framework with plus agents equipped with private costs and positive impact, and minus agents with private values and negative impact upon inclusion in the event, to maximize the overall quality of the event under a budget-balanced (BB) constraint so that the designer does not run a deficit.

We conduct a comprehensive study on the theory of optimal event curation on various utility functions.

For additive utility, we fully characterize the optimal incentive-compatible Bayesian mechanism under both the ex-ante and ex-post BB constraints.

For submodular utility, we propose an ex-ante BB mechanism that achieves a constant-factor approximation to the optimal Bayesian mechanism.

Mohammad Hajiaghayi, Sébastien Lahaie, Mohammad Mahdavi, and Suho Shin. 2026. Optimally Curating an Event. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-26. IJCAI, 3436–3443. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/382

@inproceedings{ijcai2026p382,
  title     = {Optimally Curating an Event},
  author    = {Hajiaghayi, Mohammad and Lahaie, Sébastien and Mahdavi, Mohammad and Shin, Suho},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on
               Artificial Intelligence, {IJCAI-26}},
  publisher = {International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization},
  editor    = {Diego Calvanese},
  pages     = {3436--3443},
  year      = {2026},
  month     = {8},
  note      = {Main Track},
  doi       = {10.24963/ijcai.2026/382},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/382},
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Optimally Curating an Event
AU  - Hajiaghayi, Mohammad
AU  - Lahaie, Sébastien
AU  - Mahdavi, Mohammad
AU  - Shin, Suho
T2  - Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI-26
PB  - International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization
PY  - 2026
SP  - 3436
EP  - 3443
DO  - 10.24963/ijcai.2026/382
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2026/382
ER  -