Publication - Alternating-offers bargaining in one-to-many and many-to-many settings

Authors: AN, Bo; GATTI, N.; LESSER, V
Title: Alternating-offers bargaining in one-to-many and many-to-many settings
Abstract: Automating negotiations in markets where multiple buyers and sellers operate is a scientific challenge of extraordinary importance. One-to-one negotiations are classically studied as bilateral bargaining problems, while one-to-many and many-to-many negotiations are studied as auctioning problems. This paper aims at bridging together these two approaches, analyzing agents´ strategic behavior in one-to-many and many-to-many negotiations when agents follow the alternating-offers bargaining protocol (Rubinstein Econometrica 50(1), 97--109, 33). First, we extend this protocol, proposing a novel mechanism that captures the peculiarities of these settings. Then, we analyze agents´ equilibrium strategies in complete information bargaining and we find that for a large subset of the space of the parameters, the equilibrium outcome depends on the values of a narrow number of parameters. Finally, we study incomplete information bargaining with one-sided uncertainty regarding agents´ reserve prices and we provide an algorithm based on the combination of game theoretic analysis and search techniques which finds agents´ equilibrium in pure strategies when they exist.
Keywords: Negotiation
Publication: Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, pp. 1 - 37
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2016
Sources: Other: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10472-016-9506-x
Notes: Online publication (April 2016)
Reference: AN, Bo; GATTI, N.; LESSER, V. Alternating-offers bargaining in one-to-many and many-to-many settings. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, Springer International Publishing, pp. 1-37. 2016. Online publication (April 2016)
bibtex: 
@article{AN-536,
  author    = "Bo AN and N. GATTI and V LESSER",
  title     = "{Alternating-offers bargaining in one-to-many and
               many-to-many settings}",
  journal   = "Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence",
  publisher = "Springer International Publishing",
  pages     = "1-37",
  year      = "2016",
  url       = "http://mas.cs.umass.edu/paper/536",
}