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Optimal Non-adaptive Concession Strategies with Incomplete Information

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Recent Advances in Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiation

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 638))

Abstract

When two parties conduct a negotiation, they must be willing to make concessions to achieve a mutually acceptable deal, or face the consequences of no agreement. Therefore, negotiators normally make larger concessions as the deadline is closing in. Many time-based concession strategies have already been proposed, but they are typically heuristic in nature, and therefore, it is still unclear what is the right way to concede toward the opponent. Our aim is to construct optimal concession strategies against specific classes of acceptance strategies. We apply sequential decision techniques to find analytical solutions that optimize the expected utility of the bidder, given certain strategy sets of the opponent. Our solutions turn out to significantly outperform current state of the art approaches in terms of obtained utility. Our results open the way for a new and general concession strategy that can be combined with various existing learning and accepting techniques to yield a fully-fledged negotiation strategy for the alternating offers setting.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interactive Intelligence Group, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4, Delft, The Netherlands

    Tim Baarslag, Koen Hindriks & Catholijn Jonker

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso, Showa-ku, Nagoya, 466-8555, Japan

    Rafik Hadfi & Takayuki Ito

Authors
  1. Tim Baarslag
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  2. Rafik Hadfi
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  3. Koen Hindriks
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  4. Takayuki Ito
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  5. Catholijn Jonker
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tim Baarslag .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan

    Naoki Fukuta

  2. Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya, Japan

    Takayuki Ito

  3. School of Computer Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

    Minjie Zhang

  4. Tokyo University of Agriculture and, Tokyo, Japan

    Katsuhide Fujita

  5. Institute of Sensors, Signals, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, United Kingdom

    Valentin Robu

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Baarslag, T., Hadfi, R., Hindriks, K., Ito, T., Jonker, C. (2016). Optimal Non-adaptive Concession Strategies with Incomplete Information. In: Fukuta, N., Ito, T., Zhang, M., Fujita, K., Robu, V. (eds) Recent Advances in Agent-based Complex Automated Negotiation. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 638. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30307-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30307-9_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-30305-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-30307-9

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