Tech Reports

ULCS-09-019

A Novel Method for Strategy Acquisition and its Application to a Double-Auction Market Game: Full Report

Steve Phelps, Peter McBurney and Simon Parsons

Abstract

We introduce a novel method for strategy acquisition in non-zero-sum n-player games, and empirically validate it by applying it to a well-known benchmark problem in this domain, viz the double-auction market. Many existing approaches to strategy-acquisition focus on attempting to find strategies that are robust in the sense that they are good all-round performers against all-comers. We argue that in many economic and multi-agent scenarios the robustness criterion is inappropriate; in contrast, our method focusses on searching for strategies that are likely to be adopted by participating agents. We conclude by discussing several potential applications of our algorithm, including the mechanism design problem from economics.

For each technical report listed here, copyright and all intellectual property rights remain with the respective authors. Copyright is effective from the year of publication in each case. By downloading a file from this page, you agree to use it only for purposes of research and scholarship. Any other use of this material or storage of it in any medium or its sale or distribution in any form is expressly forbidden without prior written permission from the authors concerned.