Distributed Rational Decision Making

Automated negotiation systems with self interested agents are becoming increas ingly important One reason for this is the technology push of a growing standardized communication infrastructure Internet WWW NII EDI KQML FIPA Concor dia Voyager Odyssey Telescript Java etc over which separately designed agents belonging to di erent organizations can interact in an open environment in real time and safely carry out transactions The second reason is strong application pull for computer support for negotiation at the operative decision making level For example we are witnessing the advent of small transaction electronic commerce on the Internet for purchasing goods information and communication bandwidth There is also an industrial trend toward virtual enterprises dynamic alliances of small agile enterprises which together can take advantage of economies of scale when available e g respond to more diverse orders than individual agents can but do not su er from diseconomies of scale Multiagent technology facilitates such negotiation at the operative decision mak ing level This automation can save labor time of human negotiators but in addi tion other savings are possible because computational agents can be more e ective at nding bene cial short term contracts than humans are in strategically and com binatorially complex settings This chapter discusses multiagent negotiation in situations where agents may have di erent goals and each agent is trying to maximize its own good without concern for the global good Such self interest naturally prevails in negotiations among independent businesses or individuals In building computer support for negotiation in such settings the issue of self interest has to be dealt with In cooperative distributed problem solving the system designer imposes an interaction protocol and a strategy a mapping from state history to action a