A Rank-Based Reward between a Principal and a Field of Agents: Application to Energy Savings

We consider a problem where a Principal aims to design a reward function to a field of heterogeneous agents. In our setting, the agents compete with each other through their rank within the population in order to obtain the best reward. We first explicit the equilibrium for the mean-field game played by the agents, and then characterize the optimal reward in the homogeneous setting. For the general case of a heterogeneous population, we develop a numerical approach, which is then applied to the specific case study of the market of Energy Saving Certificates.