Matchmaking In Electronic Markets

Electronic negotiations concern transactions on the basis of electronic media, such as the Internet. Platforms have been developed to aid participants in electronic markets during the agreement phase. The key activity in this is the matching of offers and requests, for which we need a ranking of the alternatives. In this book the author defines a framework in which a ranking can be generated in order to acquire an optimal decision for a desired transaction - this process is called matchmaking. The author introduces a generic framework for multidimensional, multiattribute matchmaking, its implementation, and an analysis of it. The genericity of the author’s approach means that the implementation, realized as a multiagent system, can represent both offering and requesting agents, and the framework can be applied to a huge variety of applications. The use cases in the book are derived from the human resources domain, and thus involve quite complex matchmaking. The author’s presentation is thorough and self-contained. He provides definitions of the relevant business and computer science terms, and detailed explanations of the underlying mathematical tools and software implementations.

Electronic negotiations concern transactions on the basis of electronic media, such as the Internet. Platforms have been developed to aid participants in electronic markets during the agreement phase. The key activity in this is the matching of offers and requests, for which we need a ranking of the alternatives. In this book the author defines a framework in which a ranking can be generated in order to acquire an optimal decision for a desired transaction - this process is called matchmaking. The author introduces a generic framework for multidimensional, multiattribute matchmaking, its implementation, and an analysis of it. The genericity of the author’s approach means that the implementation, realized as a multiagent system, can represent both offering and requesting agents, and the framework can be applied to a huge variety of applications. The use cases in the book are derived from the human resources domain, and thus involve quite complex matchmaking. The author’s presentation is thorough and self-contained. He provides definitions of the relevant business and computer science terms, and detailed explanations of the underlying mathematical tools and software implementations.

Complex Automated Negotiations represent an important, emerging area in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. Automated negotiations can be complex, since there are a lot of factors that characterize such negotiations. These factors include the number of issues, dependencies between these issues, representation of utilities, the negotiation protocol, the number of parties in the negotiation (bilateral or multi-party), time constraints, etc. Software agents can support automation or simulation of such complex negotiations on the behalf of their owners, and can provide them with efficient bargaining strategies. To realize such a complex automated negotiation, we have to incorporate advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies includes search, CSP, graphical utility models, Bayes nets, auctions, utility graphs, predicting and learning methods. Applications could include e-commerce tools, decision-making support tools, negotiation support tools, collaboration tools, etc. This book aims to provide a description of the new trends in Agent-based, Complex Automated Negotiation, based on the papers from leading researchers. Moreover, it gives an overview of the latest scientific efforts in this field, such as the platform and strategies of automated negotiating techniques.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th Pacific Rim International Workshop on Multi-Agents, PRIMA 2004, held in Auckland, New Zealand in August 2004 in conjunction with PRICAI 2004. The 24 revised full papers presented went through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and were selected from 52 submissions. The papers address many current topics in multi-agent research and development, ranging from theoretical and methodological issues to various applications in different fields.

Uncovers the growing and expanding phenomenon of human behavior, social constructs, and communication in online environments.

Michael Ströbel worked for several years as a software engineer and consultant in the German IT industry before joining IBM Research in Switzerland, where he developed his interest in support for negotiations in electronic markets. During his career in research, he has published several articles on this topic in major international conferences and journals and received a PhD from the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland. Based on his experiences and contributions, the author discusses electronic negotiation technologies - key ingredients for the next generation of electronic markets - from a scientific as well as a practitioner's perspective. He reviews the state-of-the-art and then introduces novel support mechanisms and design elements, which are applied in a number of case studies. This book is geared towards technicians interested in E-Commerce application development but also offers extensive background reading for educational purposes.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th Multi-disciplinary International Workshop On Artificial Intelligence, MIWAI 2011, held in Hyderabad, India, in December 2011. The 38 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 71 submissions. The papers cover the multifarious nature of the Artificial Intelligence research domain, ranging from theoretical to real world applications and address topics such as agent-based simulation, agent-oriented software engineering, agents and Web services, agent-based electronic commerce, auctions and markets, AI in video games, computer vision, constraint satisfaction, data mining, decision theory, distributed AI, e-commerce and AI, game theory, internet/www intelligence, industrial applications of AI, intelligent tutoring, knowledge representation and reasoning, machine learning, multi-agent planning and learning, multi-agent systems and their applications, multi-agent systems and evolving intelligence, natural language processing, neural networks, planning and scheduling, robotics, uncertainty in AI, and Web services.