A Contract Model for Electronic Institutions

Electronic institutions are software frameworks integrating normative environments where agents interact to create mutual commitments. Contracts are formalizations of business commitments among a group of agents, and comprise a set of applicable norms. An electronic institution acts as a trusted third-party that monitors contract compliance, by integrating in its normative environment the contractual norms, which are applicable to the set of contractual partners. In this paper we present and explore a contract model that facilitates contract establishment by taking advantage of an institutional normative background. Furthermore, the model is flexible enough to enable the expansion of the underlying normative framework, making it applicable to a wide range of contracting situations.

[1]  Hans Weigand,et al.  Formal Specification of Interaction in Agent Societies , 2002, FAABS.

[2]  Cristiano Castelfranchi,et al.  Engineering Social Order , 2000, ESAW.

[3]  Alexander Artikis,et al.  Animated specifications of computational societies , 2002, AAMAS '02.

[4]  J. van Leeuwen,et al.  Engineering Societies in the Agents World II , 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[5]  Christopher A. Rouff,et al.  Formal Approaches to Agent-Based Systems , 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[6]  Wamberto Weber Vasconcelos,et al.  Norm-oriented programming of electronic institutions , 2006, AAMAS '06.

[7]  Franco Zambonelli,et al.  Engineering Societies in the Agent World, First International Workshop, ESAW 2000, Berlin, Germany, August 21, 2000, Revised Papers , 2000, ESAW.

[8]  Javier Vázquez-Salceda,et al.  Implementing Norms in Multiagent Systems , 2004, MATES.

[9]  T. S. E. Maibaum,et al.  Towards electronic contract performance , 2001, 12th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications.

[10]  Franco Zambonelli,et al.  Engineering Societies in the Agents World , 2000, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[11]  Andrea Omicini,et al.  Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems , 2007, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[12]  Pablo Noriega,et al.  Environment Engineering for Multiagent Systems , 2004 .

[13]  Eugénio C. Oliveira,et al.  Virtual Enterprise Normative Framework Within Electronic Institutions , 2004, ESAW.

[14]  Marco Colombetti,et al.  Agent Communication and Institutional Reality , 2004, AC.

[15]  Edgar A. Whitley,et al.  The Construction of Social Reality , 1999 .

[16]  Pablo Noriega,et al.  Engineering open environments with electronic institutions , 2005, Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell..

[17]  Gerrit De Geest,et al.  Encyclopedia of Law and Economics , 2000 .

[18]  David Stuart Robertson,et al.  Enacting the Distributed Business Workflows Using BPEL4WS on the Multi-agent Platform , 2005, MATES.

[19]  Marek J. Sergot,et al.  A Formal Characterisation of Institutionalised Power , 1996, Log. J. IGPL.

[20]  Richard Craswell.  CONTRACT LAW: GENERAL THEORIES , 2000 .

[21]  Guido Boella,et al.  Contracts as legal institutions in organizations of autonomous agents , 2004, Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2004. AAMAS 2004..

[22]  Eugénio C. Oliveira,et al.  Electronic institutions for B2B: dynamic normative environments , 2008, Artificial Intelligence and Law.

[23]  Frank Dignum,et al.  Meeting the Deadline: Why, When and How , 2004, FAABS.