Title
Using an Annealing Mediator to Solve the Prisoners' Dilemma in the Negotiation of Complex Contracts
Abstract
Research on computational models of negotiation has focused almost exclusively on defining simple contracts consisting of one or a few independent issues, implying tractable contract spaces as well as single-optima utility functions for the agents involved. Many real-world contracts, by contrast, are much more complex, consisting of multiple inter-dependent issues, resulting in intractably large contract spaces and multiple-optima utility functions. Complex contracts require negotiation algorithms substantially different than those that have been considered to date for simple contracts. Previous work by the authors has shown that endowing the negotiating agents with a time-decreasing willingness to provisionally accept inferior contracts (i.e. to 'anneal') results in superior final contract utilities, but creates a prisoners' dilemma wherein agents are individually incented not to anneal. In this paper we report a solution to this problem wherein the annealing is done by a mediator, and the negotiating agents are incented to follow a truth-telling strategy that maximizes social welfare.
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1007/3-540-36378-5_12
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
annealing mediator,single-optima utility function,simple contract,multiple-optima utility function,tractable contract space,superior final contract utility,inferior contract,intractably large contract space,complex contracts,complex contract,computational model,real-world contract,welfare,social welfare,negociation,computer model,annealing
Computer science,Computer security,Prisoner's dilemma,Microeconomics,Computational model,Dilemma,Contract management,Negotiation,Distributed computing,Social Welfare
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
2531
0302-9743
3-540-00327-4
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
7
1.74
3
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mark M. Klein11550187.52
Peyman Faratin21369140.84
Yaneer Bar-Yam339844.06