Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Emergent Properties of a Market-based Digital Library with Strategic Agents

  • Published:
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) is designed as an open system that allows third parties to build and integrate their own profit-seeking agents into the marketplace of information goods and services. The profit-seeking behavior of agents, however, risks inefficient allocation of goods and services, as agents take strategic stances that might backfire. While it would be good if we could impose mechanisms to remove incentives for strategic reasoning, this is not possible in the UMDL. Therefore, our approach has instead been to study whether encouraging the other extreme—making strategic reasoning ubiquitous—provides an answer.

Toward this end, we have designed a strategy (called the p-strategy) that uses a stochastic model of the market to find the best offer price. We have then examined the collective behavior of p-strategy agents in the UMDL auction. Our experiments show that strategic thinking is not always beneficial and that the advantage of being strategic decreases with the arrival of equally strategic agents. Furthermore, a simpler strategy can be as effective when enough other agents use the p-strategy. Consequently, we expect the UMDL is likely to evolve to a point where some agents use simpler strategies and some use the p-strategy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. R. I. Brafman and Tennenholtz, ''On partially controlled multi-agent systems,'' Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, vol. 4, pp. 477–507, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  2. A. Brandenburger and E. Dekel, ''Hierarchies of beliefs and common knowledge,'' Journal of Economic Theory, vol. 59, pp. 189–198, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  3. CERC, NSF Workshop: Research Priorities in Electronic Commerce, Technical Report, Center for Research in Electronic Commerce (CREC), University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  4. E. H. Durfee, D. L. Kiskis, and W. P. Birmingham, ''The agent architecture of the University of Michigan Digital Library,'' IEE British Computer Society Proceedings on Software Engineering (Special Issue on Intelligent Agents), 1997, vol. 144(1), pp. 61–71.

    Google Scholar 

  5. E. H. Durfee, et al., ''The Dynamics of the UMDL Service Market Society,'' in ICMAS-98 the Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA-98), 1998.

  6. E. H. Durfee, and J. S. Rosenschein, ''Distributed problem solving and multi-agent systems: Comparisons and examples,'' in DAI Workshop, 1994.

  7. P. J. Gmytrasiewicz, and E. H. Durfee, ''A rigorous, operational formalization of recursive modeling, in First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-95), 1995, pp. 125–132.

  8. D. K. Gode and S. Sunder, ''Lower bounds for efficiency of surplus extraction in double auctions,'' in The Double Auction Market: Institutions, Theories, and Evidence, D. Friedman and J. Rust (Eds.), Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, 1993, pp. 199–219.

    Google Scholar 

  9. J. E. Hanson, and J. O. Kephart, ''Spontaneous specialization in a free-market economy of agents,'' in Autonomous Agents '98 Workshop, Artificial Societies and Computational Markets, Minneapolis/St. Paul, 1998, pp. 19–26.

  10. J. Hu, and M. P. Wellman, ''Online learning about other agents in a dynamic multiagent system, in Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents, 1998, 239–246.

  11. J. H. Kagel and W. Vogt, ''Buyer's bid double auctions: Preliminary experimental results,'' in The Double Auction Market: Institutions, Theories, and Evidence, D. Friedman and J. Rust (Eds.), Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, 1993, pp. 285–305.

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. O. Kephart, et al., ''Dynamics of an information-filtering economy,'' in Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, Paris, 1998.

  13. J. O. Kephart, J. E. Hanson, and J. Sairamesh, ''Price-war dynamics in a free-market economy of software agents,'' in ALIFE VI, Los Angeles, 1998.

  14. D. M. Kreps, Game Theory and Economic Modelling, Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  15. S. Park, E. H. Durfee, and W. P. Birmingham, ''Advantages of strategic thinking in multiagent contracts (a mechanism and analysis),'' in International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems ICMAS, Kyoto, Japan, 1996, pp. 259–266.

  16. S. Park, E. H. Durfee, and W. P. Birmingham, ''Emergent properties of a market-based digital library with strategic agents, in International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS), Paris, France, 1998, pp. 230–237.

  17. J. S. Rosenschein and G. Zlotkin, Rules of Encounter: Designing Conventions for Automated Negotiation among Computers, The MIT Press, 1994.

  18. J. Rust, J. Miller, and R. Palmer, Behavior of trading automata in a computerized double auction market, in The Double Auction Market, D. Friedman and J. Rust, (Eds.), 1993, pp. 155–198.

  19. T. W. Sandholm, ''Limitations of the Vickrey auction in computational multiagent systems,'' in International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, 1996, pp. 299–306.

  20. T. W. Sandholm and V. R. Lesser, ''Advantages of a leveled commitment contracting protocol,'' in AAAI, Portland, OR, 1995, pp. 126–133.

  21. Y. Shoham and M. Tennenholtz, ''Social laws for artificial agent societies: Off-line design, Artificial Intelligence, vol. 73(1–2), pp. 231–252, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  22. J. Tirole, The Theory of Industrial Organization, The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  23. H. R. Varian, ''Economic mechanism design for computerized agents,'' in USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce, New York, NY, 1995, pp. 13–21.

  24. W. Vickrey, ''Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders,'' Journal of Finance, vol. 16, pp. 8–37, 1961.

    Google Scholar 

  25. J. M. Vidal and E. H. Durfee, ''The impact of nested agent models in an information economy,'' in Second International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS96), 1996, pp. 377–384.

  26. M. P. Wellman and J. Hu, ''Conjectural equilibrium in multiagent learning,'' Machine Learning, vol. 33, pp. 179–200, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  27. G. Zlotkin and J. S. Rosenschein, ''Mechanism design for automated negotiation and its application to task oriented domains,'' Artificial Intelligence, vol. 86(2), pp. 195–244, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management Science and Information Systems Department, Faculty of Management, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, 07102

    Sunju Park

  2. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109–2110

    Edmund H. Durfee

  3. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109–2110

    William P. Birmingham

Authors
  1. Sunju Park
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Edmund H. Durfee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. William P. Birmingham
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Park, S., Durfee, E.H. & Birmingham, W.P. Emergent Properties of a Market-based Digital Library with Strategic Agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 3, 33–51 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010081711284

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010081711284

Search

Navigation