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An Information Market for Multi-agent Decision Making: Observations from a Human Experiment

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Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2774))

Abstract

Intelligent decision support systems increasingly embrace agent-based mechanisms to cope with decentralized decision problems. In this paper, we focus on the economic market model commonly used as a blueprint for the design of autonomous multi-agent systems. We present an experimental information market in which the human traders have only limited information. We analyze the traders’ private preferences and their actual behavior in the market as they exchange and acquire information. We observe that while the traders’ individual preferences show a consistent deliberative pattern throughout the market experiment, their actual decision behavior in the market appears to be reactively driven by the decisions of the other traders. These observations from human traders may have important implications for the design of market-oriented multi-agent systems to address decision problems characterized by incomplete information.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Information Systems Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA

    Bartel Van de Walle & Mihai Moldovan

Authors
  1. Bartel Van de Walle
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  2. Mihai Moldovan
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computing Laboratory, Oxford University, Parks Road, OXI 3QD, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Vasile Palade

  2. Centre for SMART Systems, School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, BN2 4GJ, Brighton, UK

    Robert J. Howlett

  3. Knowledge-Based Intelligent Engineering Systems Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Adelaide, Australia

    Lakhmi Jain

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Van de Walle, B., Moldovan, M. (2003). An Information Market for Multi-agent Decision Making: Observations from a Human Experiment. In: Palade, V., Howlett, R.J., Jain, L. (eds) Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems. KES 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2774. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45226-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45226-3_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40804-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45226-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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