The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

We present a model for bilateral negotiations that considers the uncertain and dynamic outside options. Outside options affect the negotiation strategies via their impact on the reservation price. The model is composed of three modules: single-threaded negotiations, synchronized multi-threaded negotiations, and dynamic multi-threaded negotiations. These three models embody increased sophistication and complexity. The single-threaded negotiation model provides negotiation strategies without specifically considering outside options. The model of synchronized multi-threaded negotiations builds on the single-threaded negotiation model and considers the presence of concurrently existing outside options. The model of dynamic multi-threaded negotiations expands the synchronized multithreaded model by considering the uncertain outside options that may come dynamically in the future. Experimental analysis is provided to characterize the impact of outside options on the reservation price and thus on the negotiation strategy. The results show that the utility of a negotiator improves significantly if she considers outside options, and the average utility is higher when she both considers the concurrent outside options and foresees future options.

Keywords

bilateral negotiations, multi-agent systems, model, strategy

Notes

Sponsor: NPRST

Grant ID: New York, NY

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Center for Integrated Manfacturing Decision Systems

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Advanced Agent - Robotics Technology Lab

Number of pages: 13

Text Reference

Cuihong Li, Joseph Andrew Giampapa, and Katia Sycara, "Bilateral Negotiation Decisions with Uncertain Dynamic Outside Options," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Special Issue on Game-theoretic Analysis and Stochastic Simulation of Negotiation Agents, Vol. 36, No. 1, January, 2006

BibTeX Reference

@article{Li_2006_4925,
   author = "Cuihong Li and Joseph Andrew Giampapa and Katia Sycara",
   editor = "Vladimir Marik and Mengchu Zhou",
   title = "Bilateral Negotiation Decisions with Uncertain Dynamic Outside Options",
   journal = "IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Special Issue on Game-theoretic Analysis and Stochastic Simulation of Negotiation Agents",
   publisher = "IEEE",
   address = "New York, NY",
   month = "January",
   year = "2006",
   volume = "36",
   number = "1",
}

The Robotics Institute

Menu