Abstract
We provide a formal scripting language to capture the semantics of market mechanisms. The language is based on a set of well-defined principles, and is designed to capture an agent’s rights, as derived from property, and an agent’s obligations, as derived from restrictions placed on its actions, either voluntarily or as a consequence of other actions. Rights and obligations are viewed as first-class goods, from which we define fundamental axioms about well-functioning market-oriented worlds. Coupled with the scripting language is a run-time system that is able to monitor and enforce rights and obligations. Our treatment extends to represent a variety of market mechanisms, ranging from simple two-agent single-good exchanges to complicated combinatorial auctions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Artikis, A., Pitt, J., Sergot, M.: Animated specifications of computational societies. In: Proc. of Conf. on AAMAS (2002)
Bikhchandani, S., Ostroy, J.: The Package Assignment Model. Journal of Economic Theory 107(2) (December 2002)
Daskalopulu, A., Maibaum, T.S.E.: Towards electronic contract performance. In: DEXA Workshop (2001)
Dellarocas, C., Klein, M., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J.A.: An exception-handling architecture for open electronic marketplaces of contractnet software agents. In: Proc. ACM Conf. on Electronic Commerce (EC 2000) (2000)
Hart, O.: Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford (1995)
Jackson, M.O.: Mechanism theory. In: The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, EOLSS Publishers (2000)
Peyton Jones, S.L., Eber, J.-M.: How to write a financial contract. In: Gibbons, J., de Moor, O. (eds.) The Fun of Programming. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke (2003)
McCarty, L.T.: Permissions and obligations. In: Proc. IJCAI (1983)
Meyer, J.J., Wieringa, R.J. (eds.): Deontic Logic in Computer Science. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester (1993)
Padget, J., Bradford, R.B.: A π-calculus model of a spanish fish market - preliminary report -. In: Noriega, P., Sierra, C. (eds.) AMET 1998 and AMEC 1998. LNCS, vol. 1571, p. 166. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Sadeh, N.M., Arunachalam, R., Eriksson, J., Finne, N., Janson, S.: TAC 2003: A supply chain trading competition. In: AI Magazine, vol. 24(1) (spring 2003)
Tan, Y.-H., Thoen, W.: A logical model of directed obligations and permissions to support electronic contracting. IJEC 3(2) (1999)
Tirole, J.: Incomplete contracts: Where do we stand? Econometrica 67(4) (1999)
Wellman, M.P., Wurman, P.R., O’Malley, K., Bangera, R., Lin, S., Reeves, D., Walsh, W.E.: Designing the market game for a trading agent competition. IEEE Internet Computing (2001)
Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N.R., Kinny, D.: The gaia methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. Journal of AAMAS 3(3) (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Michael, L., Parkes, D.C., Pfeffer, A. (2006). Specifying and Monitoring Market Mechanisms Using Rights and Obligations. In: Faratin, P., Rodríguez-Aguilar, J.A. (eds) Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce VI. Theories for and Engineering of Distributed Mechanisms and Systems. AMEC 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3435. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11575726_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11575726_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-29737-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-33166-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)