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A sequential model of bargaining in logic programming

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Abstract

This paper proposes a sequential model of bargaining specifying reasoning processes of an agent behind bargaining procedures. We encode agents’ background knowledge, demands, and bargaining constraints in logic programs and represent bargaining outcomes in answer sets. We assume that in each bargaining situation, each agent has a set of goals to achieve, which are normally unachievable without an agreement among all the agents who are involved in the bargaining. Through an alternating-offers procedure, an agreement among bargaining agents may be reached by abductive reasoning.We show that the procedure converges to a Nash equilibrium if each agent makes rational offers/counter-offers in each round. In addition, the sequential model also has a number of desirable properties, such as mutual commitments, individual rationality, satisfactoriness, and honesty.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer and Information Science, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Wu Chen

  2. Center for the Study of Logic and Intelligence, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Wu Chen

  3. School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW, 2751, Australia

    Dongmo Zhang

  4. School of Information Engineering, Huzhou University, Huzhou, 313000, China

    Maonian Wu

Authors
  1. Wu Chen
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  2. Dongmo Zhang
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  3. Maonian Wu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wu Chen.

Additional information

Wu Chen received his BS and MS from Southwest Normal University, China in 1998 and 2004 respectively, and PhD from Guizhou University, China in 2009. Now he is an associate professor with College of Computer and Information Science, Southwest University, China. His main research interests include bargaining, logic programming, automated negotiation, knowledge representation and reasoning.

Dongmo Zhang received his MS and PhD from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He worked as a research fellow at the University of New South Wales, Australia from 1998 to 2001. He is currently an associate professor in School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney, Australia. His research interests include belief revision, bargaining, mechanism design, automated negotiation, intelligent agents and multi-agent systems, reasoning about action, logics in AI.

Maonian Wu received his BS from Guizhou University, China in 1998, and MS from Beijing Normal University, China in 2005, and PhD from Guizhou University, China in 2008. Now He is a professor in School of Information Engineering, Huzhou University, China. His main research interests include belief revision, non-monotonic reasoning and logic programming.

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Chen, W., Zhang, D. & Wu, M. A sequential model of bargaining in logic programming. Front. Comput. Sci. 9, 474–484 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-3308-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-3308-x

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