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Multi-attribute Bilateral Bargaining in a One-to-Many Setting

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Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce VI. Theories for and Engineering of Distributed Mechanisms and Systems (AMEC 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3435))

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Abstract

Negotiations are an important way of reaching agreements between selfish autonomous agents. In this paper we focus on one-to-many bargaining within the context of agent-mediated electronic commerce. We consider an approach where a seller negotiates over multiple interdependent attributes with many buyers individually. Bargaining is conducted in a bilateral fashion, using an alternating-offers protocol. In such a one-to-many setting, “fairness,” which corresponds to the notion of envy-freeness in auctions, may be an important business constraint. For the case of virtually unlimited supply (such as information goods), we present a number of one-to-many bargaining strategies for the seller, which take into account the fairness constraint, and consider multiple attributes simultaneously. We compare the performance of the bargaining strategies using an evolutionary simulation, especially for the case of impatient buyers and small premature bargaining break off probability. Several of the developed strategies are able to extract almost all the surplus; they utilize the fact that the setting is one-to-many, even though bargaining occurs in a bilateral fashion.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    E. H. Gerding, D. J. A. Somefun & J. A. Han La Poutré

  2. School of Technology Management, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    J. A. Han La Poutré

Authors
  1. E. H. Gerding
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  2. D. J. A. Somefun
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  3. J. A. Han La Poutré
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Avenue, 02139, Cambridge, USA

    Peyman Faratin

  2. IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute CSIC, Spanish Research Council, Campus, UAB, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

    Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gerding, E.H., Somefun, D.J.A., La Poutré, J.A.H. (2006). Multi-attribute Bilateral Bargaining in a One-to-Many Setting. In: Faratin, P., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A. (eds) Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce VI. Theories for and Engineering of Distributed Mechanisms and Systems. AMEC 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3435. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11575726_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11575726_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-29737-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-33166-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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