Contracting in Vague Environments

Contracting in Vague Environments∗

This paper investigates the implications for contracting problems with adverse selection of assuming a more general information structure than usual. The paper applies a choice theoretic framework introduced in Olszewski (2007) and Ahn (2008) a special case of the vague environments in Vierø (2009a) to a canonical principal-agent model with hidden information. The vague environment reflects tha...

Fuzzy Sets and Vague Environments

In this paper we propose a natural approach to handle imprecise numbers as they arise for example from measurements. Fuzzy sets turn out to be a canonical representation for such imprecise numbers that are induced by taking diierent tolerance or error bounds into account. Fuzzy sets are induced by scaling factors that describe the magnitude of the imprecision. On the other, the scaling factors ...

Agents Contracting Tasks in Non-Colla Environments*

Agents may sub-contract some of their tasks to other agent(s) even when they don’t share a common goal. An agent tries to contract some of its tasks that it can’t perform by itself, or when the task may be performed more efficiently or better by other agents. A “selfish” agent may convince another “selfish” agent to help it with its task, even if the agents are not assumed to be benevolent, by ...

Contracting Tasks in Multi-Agent Environments

Towards a Formalisation of Electronic Contracting Environments

The IST-CONTRACT project is in the process of creating an electronic contracting language. One of the goals of this language is that it has formal underpinnings, and formalizations at a number of levels have been created. One of the lowest levels, upon which the other levels are built is the normative level. At this level, we identify how contract clauses (modeled as norms) may evolve over time...