Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Guaranteeing Properties for E-commerce Systems

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce IV. Designing Mechanisms and Systems (AMEC 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2531))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Agents in an electronic commerce system act on behalf of potentially competing individuals and organisations. It is proposed that such systems will be used in scenarios where legally binding contracts are made or money is exchanged by the agents on behalf of their owners. Agent owners may be reluctant to delegate tasks involving uncertain and possibly detrimental outcomes to an agent without assurances about the system’s properties. It may be a requirement, for example, that an agent cannot profit from lying to its peers. This paper demonstrates how solutions from game theory together with computing theories can be used to publicly specify rules and prove desirable properties for agent systems. This has the potential to increase the range of applications in which agent owners may be willing to delegate to their embedded counterparts.

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

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. Basic Books, NewYork.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Béjar, J. and Cortés, U. (2001). Agent strategies on dpb auction tournaments. In Dignum, F., Cortés, U., Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce III. Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Binmore, K. (1992). Fun and Games: A text on Game theory. D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, Massachusetts.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Dignum, F. and Cortés, U. (2001). Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce III. Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Easwaran, A. M. and Pitt, J. (2000). An agent service brokering algorithm for winner determination in combinatorial auctions. In European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. (ECAI), Berlin, Germany.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Eijk, R. M. v. (2000). Programming Languages for Agent Communication. PhD thesis, Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Esteva, M., Rodriguez, J., Sierra, C., and Garcia, P. (2001). On the formal specification of electronic institutions. In LNAI 1991, pages 126–147. Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Guerin, F. and Pitt, J. (2001). Denotational semantics for agent communication languages. In Autonomous Agents 2001, Montreal, pages 497–504. ACM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Larson, K. and Sandholm, T. (2001). Bargaining in computationally complex problems: Deliberation equilibrium. Artificial Intelligence, 132(2):183–217.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Manna, Z. and Pnueli, A. (1995). Temporal Verification of Reactive Systems (Safety), vol.2. Springer-Verlag, NewYork, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Myerson, R. B. (1981). Optimal auction design. Mathematics of Operations Research, 6(1):58–73.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. Parkes, D. C. (2000). Optimal auction design for agents with hard valuation problems. In Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce II: Towards Next-Generation Agent-Based Electronic Commerce Systems (LNAI1788), Eds: Moukas et al., Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Pradella, M. and Colombetti, M. (2001). A formal description of a practical agent for ecommerce. In Dignum, F., Cortés, U., Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce III. Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Rosenschein, J. and Zlotkin, G. (1994). Rules of Encounter. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Sandholm, T. (1996). Negotiation among Self-Interested Computationally Limited Agents. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Department of Computer Science.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sandholm, T. (1997). Unenforced ecommerce transactions. IEEE Internet Computing. Special issue on Electronic Commerce. Nov–Dec, 1(6):47–54.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Sandholm, T., Suri, S., Gilpin, A., and Levine, D. (2001). Cabob:Afast optimal algorithm for combinatorial auctions. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 1101–1108. (IJCAI), Seattle,WA.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Singh, M. (1999). An ontology for commitments in multiagent systems: Toward a unification of normative concepts. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 7:97–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Singh, M. (2000).Asocial semantics for agent communication languages. In IJCAIWorkshop on Agent Communication Languages, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Vickrey, W. (1961). Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders. Journal of Finance, 16(1):8–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Wooldridge, M. (2000). Semantic issues in the verification of agent communication languages. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 3(1):9–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intelligent and Interactive Systems, Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, Exhibition Road, SW7 2BT, London

    Frank Guerin & Jeremy Pitt

Authors
  1. Frank Guerin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jeremy Pitt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Julian Padget

  2. IBM - Haifa Research Labs, Haifa University, Israel

    Onn Shehory

  3. Maxwell Dworkin Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA

    David Parkes

  4. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Norman Sadeh

  5. IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Harthorne, NY, USA

    William E. Walsh

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Guerin, F., Pitt, J. (2002). Guaranteeing Properties for E-commerce Systems. In: Padget, J., Shehory, O., Parkes, D., Sadeh, N., Walsh, W.E. (eds) Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce IV. Designing Mechanisms and Systems. AMEC 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2531. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36378-5_16

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36378-5_16

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00327-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36378-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation