Tech Reports

ULCS-03-008

Towards a Theory of Negotiation Strategy (A Preliminary Report)

Iyad Rahwan, Peter McBurney and Liz Sonenberg

Abstract

This paper takes the first steps towards a generic theory of strategy in negotiation interactions between autonomous computational agents. Previous efforts at defining and studying negotiation strategies have done so within the context of a particular interaction protocol, or class of protocols. In order to develop a protocol-independent theory of strategy, we first identify the factors which may influence the creation of a strategy for a rational agent, and then consider some of these in more detail. As an example, we apply our generic approach to the Zeuthen strategy of the Monotonic Concession Protocol and a particular strategy from the International Trading Agent Competition.

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