Multi-Issue Negotiation with Deadlines

This paper studies bilateral multi-issue negotiation between self-interested autonomous agents. Now, there are a number of different procedures that can be used for this process; the three main ones being the package deal procedure in which all the issues are bundled and discussed together, the simultaneous procedure in which the issues are discussed simultaneously but independently of each other, and the sequential procedure in which the issues are discussed one after another. Since each of them yields a different outcome, a key problem is to decide which one to use in which circumstances. Specifically, we consider this question for a model in which the agents have time constraints (in the form of both deadlines and discount factors) and information uncertainty (in that the agents do not know the opponent's utility function). For this model, we consider issues that are both independent and those that are interdependent and determine equilibria for each case for each procedure. I...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: JAIR
• Authors: S. Shaheen Fatima, Michael Wooldridge, Nicholas R. Jennings
• Keywords: JAIR 2006, Package Deal, Package Deal Procedure, Procedures