{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Optimally Curating an Event","authors":[{"name":"Mohammad Hajiaghayi","slug":"mohammad-hajiaghayi","given":"Mohammad","family":"Hajiaghayi","affiliation":""},{"name":"Sebastien Lahaie","slug":"sebastien-lahaie","given":"Sébastien","family":"Lahaie","affiliation":""},{"name":"Mohammad Mahdavi","slug":"mohammad-mahdavi","given":"Mohammad","family":"Mahdavi","affiliation":""},{"name":"Suho Shin","slug":"suho-shin","given":"Suho","family":"Shin","affiliation":""}],"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.\r\nWe 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.\r\n\r\nWe conduct a comprehensive study on the theory of optimal event curation on various utility functions.\r\nFor additive utility, we fully characterize the optimal incentive-compatible Bayesian mechanism under both the ex-ante and ex-post BB constraints.\r\nFor submodular utility, we propose an ex-ante BB mechanism that achieves a constant-factor approximation to the optimal Bayesian mechanism.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2026/382","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/382","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/0382.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/382.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/bibtex/382","volume":{"slug":"2026","title":"Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2026","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2026/","year":2026,"location":"Bremen, Germany","dates":"15-21 August 2026","editors":"Diego Calvanese","isbn":"978-1-956792-09-6","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2026"},"section":"Game Theory and Economic Paradigms","track":"Main Track","number":382,"pages":{"first":3436,"last":3443},"keywords":["Natural Language Processing: Applications","Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism design"],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}