Dr. Toshihiko Namba and Dr. Takahiro Inada Win “2023 JSAI Incentive Award”

Dr. Toshihiko Namba from the Department of Economics and Dr. Takahiro Inada from the Department of Business Administration presented at the “24th Special Interest Group on Data-Oriented Constructive Mining and Simulation (SIG-DOCMAS) Research Meeting” during the “Joint Research Meeting 2023 of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence,” held on November 25, 2023【https://www.ai-gakkai.or.jp/about/award/jsai_award-sig/】(Japanese website). Their presentation received the “2023 JSAI Incentive Award.”

The awarded research, titled “Optimal Compensation Scheme Considering Overwork and Effort Cost: A Reinforcement Learning Approach,” addresses a critical issue in economics and management—how to design optimal compensation scheme for salespersons. The study employed an advanced method, reinforcement learning, to reveal that in certain situations, strong incentives in quota-based contracts lead to overwork (i.e., above-optimal effort), decreasing efficiency and potentially lowering firm profits.

This research was selected for the award based on participant voting, praised for its innovative approach and practical applicability to real-world issues. Detailed reasons for the award and the research abstract (in Japanese) are published in Volume 39, Issue 5, pages 688-9 of the “Journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence”.

Kyoto University of Advanced Science hopes that this kind of innovative research will contribute to solving societal issues not only in economics and management but across a wide range of fields. We are committed to advancing academic progress through cutting-edge research led by our faculty.

（Takahiro Inada, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration）