Investigating commitment flexibility in multi-agent contracts

Reputation and commitment are important issues for automated contracting. Levelled commitment contracts, i.e. contracts where each party can decommit by paying a predetermined penalty, were introduced to allow self interested agents to accommodate events that unfolded since the contract was entered into. Various approaches to modelling reputation have been explored, allowing an agent to make decisions after considering not only current opportunities, but also possible longer term (social) implications of maintaining a reputation for reliability in contract fulfilment. An agent may consider both its own reputation for honesty and the past behaviour of others. We explore a combination of these issues in the context of a simple contracting scenario. Analytical and simulation results are presented. Theme area: empirical evaluation