U-Mart: A Test Bed for Interdisciplinary Research into Agent-Based Artificial Markets

U-Mart is a research project to construct a virtual stock market in which any preregistered agent can participate via networks. The aim of the project is to provide a forum where many agents of both computer programs and human traders participate in an auction and compete in a market, and also to provide a forum where research on market structure analysis is carried out. In this chapter, we introduce the concept and the system specification of U-Mart, and describe its importance and research possibilities in the context of economics, computer sciences, and artificial intelligence.