Leveled-Commitment Contracting: A Backtracking Instrument for Multiagent Systems
Leveled-Commitment Contracting: A Backtracking Instrument for Multiagent Systems
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分级承诺承包：多代理系统的回溯工具
DOI：
10.1609/aimag.v23i3.1659
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
V. Lesser
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
T. Sandholm;V. Lesser
在自利代理人的（自动）谈判系统中，合同传统上是有约束力的。它们不能适应未来的事件。应急合同解决了这个问题，但往往不切实际。作为替代方案，我们建议采用分级承诺合同。承诺的级别是通过取消惩罚来设定的。为了摆脱合同，代理人只需向合同的另一方支付违约金。自私自利的代理人不愿意解除合同，因为其他合同方可能解除合同，在这种情况下，原代理人从合同中解脱出来，不承担违约金，并从另一方收取违约金。我们的研究表明，尽管有这样的战略退出，但水平承诺增加了所有合同各方的预期收益，并可以实现在完全承诺下不可能实现的交易。介绍并比较了不同的退役机制。为市场设计者提供了实用的处方。网络上提供了一个契约优化器ECOMMITTER。
In (automated) negotiation systems for self-interested agents, contracts have traditionally been binding. They do not accommodate future events. Contingency contracts address this but are often impractical. As an alternative, we propose leveled-commitment contracts. The level of commitment is set by decommitting penalties. To be freed from the contract, an agent simply pays its penalty to the other contract party(ies). A self-interested agent will be ruluctant to decommit because some other contract party might decommit, in which case the former agent gets freed from the contract, does not incur a penalty, and collects a penalty from the other party. We show that despite such strategic decommitting, leveled commitment increases the expected payoffs of all contract parties and can enable deals that are impossible under full commitment. Different decommitting mechanisms are introduced and compared. Practical prescriptions for market designers are presented. A contract optimizer, ECOMMITTER, is provided on the web.